


find a new place to be from

by sevensevan



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Ensemble Cast, Found Family, Happy Ending, Horror, Multi, Nonbinary Adora (She-Ra), Trans Bow (She-Ra), Trans Characters, ghost hunters au, i'm listing characters by appearance so i can remember who all is in it lmao, it's finally here folks, or as someone on tumblr has named it. glimbowsters au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 70,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28313181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensevan/pseuds/sevensevan
Summary: On a cold night in 1910, something unexplainable occurs at a house outside of Bright Moon. Distant neighbors report red lights, strange noises, and horrible screaming. The police investigation finds no clues as to what may have happened, and no trace of the two girls who lived in the house, or their shadowy guardian. Without an owner present, the house is reclaimed by the bank, and then the state. It stands empty for decades, alone on its hill, the subject of ghost stories and urban legends.A hundred and ten years later, Bow and Glimmer enter a supposedly haunted house on a dare—and find much more than they ever could've bargained for. For Glimmer, proof that the universe is much bigger than she had imagined it, and access to a destiny that she has been waiting to claim. For Bow, a new roommate—and, maybe, a chance to do what he does best: help someone.(this is an ensemble fic—equal parts catradora and glimbow! there's lots for everyone!)
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Catra & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Comments: 353
Kudos: 425





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello. if you follow me on tumblr, or have read any of my other spop fics, you are very aware of what this is, and how excited i am about it. if you don't—well.
> 
> this is ghost hunters au. it's an ensemble fic, like i said in the summary, so you'll be getting lots of ship content for glimbow and catradora and also a lot of friendship/found family with all of them. an important thing to note is that this is not going to be a lighthearted fic overall. if you've read my catradora fic the roots that sleep, you know that i like delving into painful emotional territory. the same holds true here, maybe even more so than it did in roots.
> 
> there will be some depictions of violence and some depictions of child abuse, though i'm trying to keep those as tasteful as possible and avoid them wherever they aren't absolutely necessary. and—this is an important one—there will be depicted character death. _please_ don't let that discourage you from reading this. it's a fic that incorporates a lot of supernatural elements, and i'm not going to spoil things, but i promise you that at the end of this, all four of the main characters are going to be happy and together with their partners and their friends. this is not a tragedy, and the ending isn't even bittersweet—it's just very, very happy.
> 
> so! i mention all that because i don't want to surprise anyone with that stuff. running into abuse or death in a story without warning can suck. but i hope you'll read this even if the warnings make you apprehensive. roots readers can vouch for me; i'll put y'all through hell first, but the happy ending will come through, and it'll be worth it.
> 
> i don't think there's any specific notes i need to add for this chapter. it's more introduction than anything, and i think it's very fun. enjoy.

“Glimmer, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Bow says. He’s staring out of the front windshield of his car up the hill in front of them. They’re a few miles out of Bright Moon proper, parked on the side of a dirt road in his dads’ old Jeep—the only car either of them have that could handle the rough, unmaintained road that took them up to this spot. But neither the road nor the hill itself draw his interest.

Bow’s gaze is fixed on the house. It juts up awkwardly from the very top of the hill, several stories tall and little more than a shadow in the moonlight. From here, all he can make out is the pointed slope of the roof and the boxy outline of its shape.

“Chill,” Glimmer says from the passenger seat. Bow drags his eyes away from the house and looks over at her, only to find her rolling her eyes. “It’s just a house, Bow.”

“Sounds good,” Bow says. “So we go back to town and tell Sea Hawk that it’s just a house. Just an old, creepy house.”

“Well, _I_ could do that,” Glimmer says. “But you’re a terrible liar. And I’m not gonna wimp out!”

“C’mon,” Bow says. “It’s just a stupid dare. We don’t have to _actually_ —“

“Are you coming or not?” Without waiting for an answer, Glimmer hops out of the passenger side door and slams it behind her. Bow looks back at the house. He could swear it’s a little bigger and a little darker than it was the last time he checked.

_We’re so going to die_.

Bow opens the driver’s side door and hops out.

“If anything weird happens, we’re leaving,” he says, trying his best to glare at Glimmer over the hood of his car. She rolls her eyes again, thoroughly unswayed by his glare.

“Fine,” she says. “Now c’mon. Let’s go take a look.” Bow locks his car and shoves his keys in his pocket, shaking his head as he follows Glimmer off the road.

They cut across the ditch, hopping over a thin trail of water at the bottom. On the other side, there’s a few feet of grass and vetch before they hit short, thick trees. There’s less vegetation on the ground in the woods, but they block out the light from the full moon. Bow stumbles over three roots in his first three steps.

“I can’t see shit,” Glimmer says from beside him. Bow grabs his phone from his pocket and flicks on the flashlight function, aiming it at the ground. The dirt in front of them is almost more root than dirt; a web of half-buried limbs coats all of the earth in sight.

“Watch your step,” Bow says. Glimmer doesn’t respond, but she slips her hand into his. Bow does his very best to not think about the contact. Glimmer is touchy; she always has been. Nothing has changed on her end. He’s just a lot more aware of it than he used to be.

“We should get out of the woods pretty quick,” Glimmer says after a moment of them both staring at their feet, trying to navigate the woods without tripping. “It didn’t look like they went far up the hill.” Bow nods. His hands are sweating, which both—he imagines—is very unpleasant for Glimmer, and makes it difficult to hold onto his phone. He can’t help it, though; his heart is pounding in his chest.

_It’s just a house._

Sure enough, they emerge from the woods after only a minute or two of staring at their own feet. Bow glances around them, wondering why the woods have stopped where they have. Nothing looks different about the soil, and nobody has cut trees down up here in…a very, very long time.

Bow’s phone flashlight flickers. He frowns and looks down. Maybe he hit the button on accident? But his phone is locked, the screen black. The flashlight button isn’t pulled up.

The light goes out.

“What the fuck?” Bow mutters. He hits the home button, intending to turn it on again, but the phone screen stays black. He tries the side button next, holding it down for a long few seconds.

“What’s going on?” Glimmer asks. Bow shakes his head. Eventually, a dimly glowing symbol comes up onscreen: an empty battery and a power cord.

“It’s dead,” Bow says. He stares at the screen for another moment before he returns it to his pocket.

“What percentage were you at?” Glimmer asks.

“Like, eighty.” Bow glances up at the house again, which is now a lot closer to them, looming dark and sharp against the sky. “I think this counts as _something weird_ happening.”

“Oh, come on,” Glimmer says. “We haven’t even made it to the house yet!”

“My phone was charged!”

“It’s also, like, five years old. It could’ve just died.” Glimmer pouts at him. “We have to at least make it to the house.”

“You try your flashlight,” Bow says. His phone _is_ old. If Glimmer’s works, maybe he’s just paranoid.

“I left my phone in the car.” Glimmer shrugs. “These jeans don’t have pockets.” Bow groans. “Hey, I don’t like it either,” Glimmer says. “Blame the misogynistic fashion designers.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Bow says. “We’ll go _to_ the house. I’m not going inside.”

“We’ll see,” Glimmer says. She tugs at his hand, starting up the hill again. Bow wonders if she knows she’s found his weakness. She could take him anywhere, including into old, creepy, rumored-to-be haunted houses, if she led him by the hand.

The rest of the climb goes without incident. By the time they reach the house, Bow swears it’s half as far from the road as it appears to be. It only takes them a few minutes to climb the hill, and he could’ve sworn the place was at least a mile off the road.

“Huh,” Glimmer says, leaning back on her heels and craning her neck to look at the house. “Pretty big, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” The house is three stories tall, judging by the windows that Bow can count on the outside. He can’t quite tell what color it’s painted—despite the full moon, it’s dark enough out that everything looks grey—but the trim is bright white. Shockingly white, in fact, for a house that’s been abandoned as long as anyone can remember. One of his dads grew up in Bright Moon, and Bow has heard the same ghost stories about the house from him as he has from his classmates since he was a little kid.

“Let’s go in,” Glimmer says. She starts to pull him forward, and Bow yanks his hand out of hers.

“Absolutely not,” he says. Glimmer turns around gives him a _look_. “It’s not safe, Glimmer! There could be animals in there, or—or people. Squatters.”

“Or,” Glimmer says with a grin, “there could be _ghosts_.”

“I’m serious,” Bow says. Glimmer sighs.

“You can stay out here if you want,” she says. “I’m gonna go look. We can tell Sea Hawk you wimped out on Monday.”

“Glimmer—“ Glimmer turns around and climbs the porch steps. They creak quietly under her feet. They, too, glint bright white in the darkness. Some moss has grown on them, but the paint underneath shines through, almost glowing.

“Fine, I’ll come with you,” Bow says, and follows Glimmer up the steps. He can’t just let her walk in there _alone_. It’s not like he can protect her if there _are_ ghosts in there, but if there’s animals, or people, or something else mundane, he might be able to. He can’t exactly let his best friend get rabies from a bat bite without even _trying_ to help.

“C’mon then,” Glimmer says, glancing over her shoulder at him. He steps up beside her, and they both turn to face the front door. It’s wooden, with a plain metal knob that shines dully in the moonlight. The wood is painted…green, Bow thinks, though it’s hard to make out in the moonlight. It doesn’t show a single sign of decay, as far as he can tell. No rot, no moss, no missing pieces. Like however many decades of weather and animals haven’t even touched it.

Bow doesn’t like it one bit.

“Here we go, I guess.” Glimmer sounds a little nervous too, now. Bow doesn’t comment on it. He’s too busy keeping his own breathing even. It’s _stupid_. He shouldn’t be scared. He only half-believes in ghosts.

Glimmer turns the knob and opens the front door. Bow winces preemptively as the door creaks open. Its hinges, at least, _sound_ old. But it doesn’t reveal anything except the dark inside of a house. Glimmer is the first to step across the threshold, and Bow follows close behind. He closes the door behind them. He isn’t sure _why_. Maybe he’s just seen too many horror movies where doors get slammed by ghosts.

“It’s so fucking dark in here,” Glimmer comments. Bow glances around and reaches the same conclusion. The moonlight from outside is flooding through the windows beside the door, casting long, thin beams of light, but between them, it’s impossible to see anything.

“Should we look around?” Bow asks. He doesn’t want to, but standing still feels worse, somehow.

“Yeah,” Glimmer says. “Hey, is it…warmer in here than it is outside?” Bow frowns and thinks about it for a moment.

“…Yeah,” he says. “Maybe the heat from the day stays in? It seems like all the windows are intact, so it wouldn’t be able to escape.” He wanders over to the closest window out of curiosity. There’s nothing remarkable about it. It’s a simple sheet of glass—scratched in places, but not cracked, not shattered. It’s also… _clean_. Perfectly transparent. Like someone scrubbed it just hours ago. He leans closer to the window, frowning deeply, reaching out to touch it.

Someone coughs.

Bow screams, jumping in place and spinning around. Glimmer bursts out laughing, pausing to cough again mid-laugh before she goes back to mocking him. Bow’s face burns with embarrassment.

“Sorry,” Glimmer says, once she’s done both coughing and laughing. “It’s dusty in here.” Bow frowns at her, arms crossed pointedly over his chest, and she rolls her eyes. “It was pretty funny,” she says. “What were you looking at, anyways?” She comes over to him, peering at the window.

“The windows are clean,” Bow points out. “Like, _really_ clean.”

“Huh.” Glimmer tilts her head. “They sure are.”

“That’s _weird_ , Glimmer. How long has this house been here?”

“Like a hundred years,” Glimmer says. “It was already abandoned when my grandparents moved here.”

“So the windows shouldn’t be _clean_ ,” Bow says. “How long did it take for that house way out on Serenia Street to get run down?”

“Two years, maybe.” Glimmer frowns. “But people go trash that place all the time. Nobody ever comes up here.”

“Still,” Bow says. “This place is…” He doesn’t finish the thought.

“You’re just afraid of the dark,” Glimmer says—which is true. Bow _is_ afraid of the dark, just as any normal, _sane_ person should be. “Let’s look around at least a little bit.” She starts off down a hallway to their right, and Bow follows reluctantly in her footsteps, fists clenched nervously at his sides.

The hallway doesn’t extend very far; they barely start down it before it stops at the base of a staircase. There aren’t as many windows here, and Bow has to squint to make out the faint red carpet on the stairs. They go straight upwards into the darkness of whatever lays on the second floor of the house.

Glimmer puts her right foot on the bottom step of the stairs. Even in the dimmest moonlight, Bow can see the thick layer of dust that plumes upward from the carpet beneath her shoe.

“We shouldn’t go up there,” Bow says, grabbing Glimmer’s arm. She glances back at him. “The stairs could collapse. We have no idea how structurally sound they are.”

“Oh, come on—“

“ _Glimmer_.” Bow tries to emphasize his words. He needs her to take him seriously. The stairs might not be stable. And, beyond that, looking at them makes Bow _nervous_. He doesn’t _feel_ like they should go up there. Like, whatever is on the second floor, it’s emanating danger.

But Glimmer wouldn’t take that seriously, so Bow says, “I’m serious. You could get really hurt.” Glimmer looks at him for another long moment, then steps back off the stairs. Bow lets go of her arm and sighs in relief.

“Okay, we’ll stay down here,” she says. “But you gotta help me open that.” She points past Bow’s shoulder, and he turns, eyes finding a closed door beneath the staircase.

“Why this one?” Bow asks, already walking over to the door.

“I dunno,” Glimmer says. “Aren’t you curious?” Bow shakes his head. He’s mostly curious about when they’re going to _leave_.

Bow grabs the doorknob—another plain, old-fashioned, metal thing, but this one, unlike the front door, doesn’t have a lock on it. He twists it to the right—or rather, he tries. It slides barely a centimeter in his hands before it jerks back to its original position. He twists it again, harder this time, and meets even more resistance.

“What’s wrong?” Glimmer asks from behind him. “Is it locked?”

“It doesn’t have a lock,” Bow says. “I think it’s stuck on something.” He twists again, and this time, the doorknob turns all the way.

Before he can push forwards, the knob is ripped from his hands. The door flies open. Bow stumbles back a step, eyes straining in the darkness to see what lies beyond the doorway.

It’s a girl.

She looks around Bow’s age, as much as he can tell in the darkness. He makes out brown hair, tan skin, and a dress in a style that’s been dead for at least a century before the girl moves. She shoots forward, running around Bow before he can even _try_ to step out of her way. He spins in place and watches as she sprints back down the hallway towards the entryway.

Before she gets there, she vanishes.

“What the fuck,” Glimmer says. Bow turns to her slowly and finds her staring down the hall after the girl, eyes wide. “What the _fuck_.”

“Was that…” Bow isn’t willing to say it. He wasn’t—he didn’t _not_ believe in ghosts. He hadn’t discounted the possibility. But thinking something _might_ be possible is very different from _seeing_ it.

“I…” Glimmer shakes her head slowly, turning to face Bow. “I…” Bow reaches out, grabbing for Glimmer’s hand in the darkness, and he finds it immediately. She holds onto him so tightly it hurts, the bones of his hand creaking together.

Something _thumps_ against the ceiling from the second floor.

“ _Shit_!” Bow hisses, jumping in place. He looks up—which is useless, of course, since there’s a fucking _ceiling_.

“What was that?” Glimmer sounds _scared_ now. Bow has never heard that tone from her before. He hates it.

“I don’t know.”

_Thump_.

Another one. A little louder this time. Then— _thump_ —another. _Thump_. Another.

“Are those footsteps?” Glimmer whispers, and Bow’s heart sinks as he realizes that _yes_ , they absolutely _are_.

Suddenly it’s windy in the hallway. Bow’s jacket flaps against his arms and goosebumps rise on the back of his neck. Glimmer steps closer, pressing up against his side, and Bow squeezes her hand as reassuringly as he can.

“ _Hide_.” The voice isn’t Glimmer’s, and it isn’t Bow’s, either. He’s never heard it before in his life.

“Did the wind just fucking talk to us?” Glimmer whispers. “Why is it windy?”

_Thump_. This one is accompanied by a _creak_ , and Bow realizes suddenly that, whatever it is that’s walking around, it’s coming down the stairs now.

“Hide,” he whispers harshly, echoing the wind’s advice. “Come on. In here.” He uses their joined hands to pull Glimmer into the open door. He stumbles in after her, ducking his head away from the low ceiling that he can just barely see in the dark, and yanks the door shut with his other hand.

_Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump._

The footsteps pass over their heads and continue down the stairs.

“Oh my God.” Glimmer’s voice comes out wheezing. Bow pulls her closer, wrapping his arms around her back. It kind of feels like they’re about to die. He’d like to be as close to her as he can while that happens.

“ _I heard you_.” The voice comes from outside the closet. Or—voices? It sounds like a chorus, layered and echoed. It’s deep, rasping, and _heavy_ somehow. It makes Bow’s mouth go dry in fear.

“ _I know you’re here_ ,” the voice says. “ _Come back out here, Catra_.”

_Catra?_

“It isn’t looking for us,” Bow whispers to Glimmer, so quietly he’s almost just mouthing the words. She nods against his chest, and Bow realizes that she’s trembling. Her fingers are digging into his back. She’s just as afraid as he is—maybe more.

He rubs her back gently and pulls himself out of her arms.

“Bow,” Glimmer whispers—a little too loud.

“Shh.” He wishes he could see her. “I’m just going to look.”

“ _Bow_!” Glimmer grabs the hem of his jacket. “Are you _insane_?”

“I want to see.” He can’t explain the urge, really. The girl who’d run out of the closet—the _ghost_ —she had looked scared. And this _thing_ , whatever is out there, is calling a name. Looking for the girl. Bow just…wants to understand. He wants to know what’s going on.

Maybe, somehow, he can help.

Glimmer’s fingers fall from Bow’s jacket. He eases himself forward, pressing himself silently against the door.

“ _Catra_ ,” the voice calls again. “ _You know I’ll find you eventually._ ” Bow wraps his fingers around the doorknob. He takes a deep, steadying breath, presses the side of his face against the door right next to the frame, and slides the door open. Barely an inch. Just enough to see out with one of his eyes.

At the bottom of the stairs is a figure. Not a _person_ , a figure. It towers over the room, eight feet tall or more, and glows an angry red, but it doesn’t illuminate the room around it—like a blacklight. As Bow watches, the patches of dark, purplish red seem to slide down its body, interspersed with black beneath. Like some kind of sludge dripping down, though none of it falls from the bottom of the figure, where it’s hovering several inches off of the floor.

“ _Catra_ ,” the figure says, and its mouth moves. Its face is…far removed from human, but not quite far enough to be animal. From here, Bow can make out pale green skin, barely visible beneath a web of veins of that purple-red sludge. Long black hair floats behind it, unbound by gravity. “ _Aren’t you a little old for hide and seek_?” Without waiting for an answer, the figure starts forward. It settles onto the floor, the layers of sludge and darkness obscuring where Bow assumes it must have feet.

_Thump. Thump. Thump_.

Slowly— _agonizingly_ slowly—the figure heads down the hall. It doesn’t vanish like the girl had. It walks all the way down the hall, into the entryway, then it turns right, away from the door, and disappears.

Bow closes the door and realizes he’s been holding his breath. He lets it out and gasps for fresh air. His throat is tight with fear.

“What was it?” Glimmer whispers. Bow shakes his head.

“It—I…” He swallows hard. “I don’t know. I can’t…”

“Is it gone?”

“Yeah,” Bow says. “Yeah. For now.”

“Let’s get out of here.” Glimmer’s hand finds his again, and her fingers shake as she laces them through his. “Now. While we can.”

“Right.” Bow squeezes her hand, takes a deep breath, and opens the closet door.

The hallway is empty, abandoned, without a single sign of the ghost girl or the _thing_ that had stalked her only moments ago.

“Run,” Glimmer says, and Bow listens.

They sprint back up the hallway. Bow grabs for the front door handle and practically cries in relief when it turns easily in his hand and opens. They aren’t trapped.

Glimmer runs out the front door first, but Bow is close behind, slamming the door behind them and jumping down the front steps in one leap. They half-run, half-stumble down the dirt hill, hands still locked together. They don’t slow down until they hit the forest.

Bow takes one last look back up at the house, and he could swear he sees a faint red glow in one of the second floor windows.

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Glimmer says, gasping. Bow shakes his head.

“Back to the car first,” he says. “I want to get out of here.” Glimmer doesn’t argue with that. They hurry through the forest, tripping over roots all the way down. He finally has to let go of Glimmer’s hand to catch himself the third time he almost falls. Eventually, though, they make it through, back to the ditch by the road and the shape of Bow’s Jeep outlined in the moonlight.

Bow has to fumble with his keys for a moment, but the minute the doors are unlocked, they pile into the vehicle. Bow hits the overhead light immediately. The inside of the car, the dim LED light, and the quiet beeping from the dashboard as the car reminds him to fasten his seatbelt are all strongly at odds with the way Bow’s heart is pounding. He starts the car, flicking on the headlights as bright as they can go.

The only thing in front of them is empty, unmaintained dirt road.

“Holy fuck,” Glimmer says from the passenger seat. Bow grabs for her hand again, and Glimmer gives it to him, twining their fingers together and squeezing. “ _Fuck_. What was…that girl _vanished_.”

“Yeah.” Bow swallows hard. “She was—she was a ghost.” He feels kind of stupid saying it out loud.

“Yeah.” Glimmer leans back in her seat, closing her eyes. “What the fuck,” she says again. “Ghosts are _real_.”

“Yeah.” Unbidden, Bow starts to laugh. He tries to stop it at first, but it’s fruitless. Ghosts are real, and so is _whatever_ that figure had been, and he and Glimmer have just spent their Saturday night getting the shit scared out of them in a _literal_ haunted house.

Glimmer laughs, too. A little less enthusiastically than Bow, but she sounds just as relieved and terrified as he does. Eventually, they both fall quiet. Bow’s heart is finally settling in his chest.

“What was the other thing?” Glimmer asks after a moment. “The thing you looked at.” Bow shivers slightly and reaches over to turn the car heat up.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t human. Or maybe it used to be. It had a face, and it talked, but it wasn’t…” He shakes his head. “It—it was tall. Really tall. And covered in this…glowing _stuff_ , this kind of dark red stuff. It glowed.” He’s repeating himself. He doesn’t have the words for what he saw in that hallway.

“It sounded angry,” Glimmer says. Bow nods. It had sounded _evil_. And that girl, who had been hiding in the closet he opened, in the brief glimpse of her face that Bow managed to get, she looked scared.

“I can’t fucking believe I have to believe in ghosts now,” Glimmer says after a minute. “Who the fuck is _ever_ going to believe that I saw a ghost in a creepy house?”

“I will,” Bow says. Glimmer gives him worn-out smile and squeezes his hand.

“Thanks, Bow,” she says. “It can be our absolutely insane secret, I guess. Can we go home now?”

“Yeah, of course.” Bow reluctantly lets go of Glimmer’s hand, putting the Jeep in gear and starting a three-point turn to head back down the road.

Bow drives Glimmer back to her parents’ house on autopilot. It’s a route he’s driven a thousand times—though not starting from the house up on the hill, of course—so he doesn’t have to think about it much once they get back into town. It’s very lucky that he knows it so well, because his brain is fully somewhere else. He’s thinking about the girl in the closet, how scared she had looked and how fast she had run from the monster that came down the stairs.

_Catra_ , the monster had called her. With a name and a house, he could have a place to start researching. Maybe he can figure out who she is, how she ended up haunting the house, what the _thing_ is that’s trying to hurt her.

Maybe, somehow, he can help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and there you have it. this chapter was a very fun one for me to write; i don't do horror stuff that often. this was tropey and ridiculous but tense, and i really liked putting together that combination. i also loved writing evil lava lamp shadow weaver. it's nice to write her with all her creepy visuals again (and some of my own added) after writing her in modern aus so much.
> 
> @bonpop on tumblr made fanart of this chapter! here it is:  
> 
> 
> my playlist for this fic is [here on spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6wH6h0HtJQnfMl260Ofp3J) if you're interested! some of the songs lyrically relate to this fic, some just fit the vibe. your guess as to which ones are which. it's what i listen to while i'm writing, and i'll probably add more to it as time goes by, so if you want mood music for future chapters you've got it :)
> 
> i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan if you wanna talk to me about this fic; i'm chronically online and if i'm awake you'll probably get an answer within the hour. i'm always happy to talk abt spop/my other fandoms/my writing/being trans/literally anything. i also write prompts, which are archived on ao3. check out those and my other spop works if you liked this! some of them are even fluffy!
> 
> please, _please_ leave a comment if you liked this! this fic is my baby and i would love to know that other people love it half as much as i do asjdga. see y'all soon!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello. happy new year y'all. to celebrate, here is a chapter that ends on a cliffhanger. but if it makes you feel better, this cliffhanger is moderately less infuriating than the cliffhanger i was originally going to end this chapter on.
> 
> i don't think i have anything serious to discuss in this author's note. i really appreciated all the comments on the last chapter. it makes me really goddamn happy to know that somebody else likes this story, since it's been living in my head for months now.
> 
> also i'm going to stick with weekly updates as much as i can, given that i'm revising what i have and writing the middle of the fic and outlining the ending all at once. we'll see how it goes.
> 
> there are more horror elements in this chapter, and there's descriptions of dead bodies, so be warned about that. enjoy.

The minute Glimmer gets into the school building, she turns left and heads for the library.

She hasn’t seen Bow since Saturday night. He had some family event on Sunday—Glimmer should probably know what it was, but he has _twelve siblings_ , for fuck’s sake; she can’t be expected to keep track of all of them, especially since none of them live at home anymore—and as a result, she had spent the day alone: lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and trying to reconcile with the fact that _ghosts exist_.

She’s decided that she hates that fact, and is going to ignore it whenever that’s at all possible.

In any case, Bow is bound to be in the library before first period. Both his dads work there, although George only does so part-time, and Bow is close with both of them. He’s in there practically every morning.

Sure enough, Glimmer wanders into the library, says hello to Lance at the front desk, and immediately finds Bow sitting at one of the tables spread out in the center of the room. He has a book open in front of him, and he’s frantically taking notes in a spiral notebook. He’s also wearing his glasses, which he almost _never_ does. Glimmer usually only gets to see them when she sleeps over at his house.

“Hey,” Glimmer says, setting her coffee down in front of him. Bow jumps slightly in his seat, head jolting up to look at her. “What’re you reading? Did I miss homework for something?”

“Not as far as I know,” Bow says. He tilts the book up, showing Glimmer the front cover. She squints at it. _Bright Moon, 1900-1935_ , it says, in small, faded letters.

“Is this your new hobby?” Glimmer asks, tilting her chair back. “Incredibly boring, nerdy small town history?”

“Nope,” Bow says. “I’m trying to find out more about the house. Who owned it, why it’s abandoned, who—“ He leans forwards over the table, lowering his voice. “—who that ghost might be.” Glimmer stares at him.

“ _Why_ ,” she says. If it was up to her, she would have last night erased from her mind. It was _scary_. For a moment in that closet, Glimmer had been _sure_ she was going to die. She doesn’t want to think about what that kind of fear feels like. And she doesn’t want to know about ghosts, either.

So why is Bow trying to learn _more_?

“That girl—“ Bow sighs. He closes his book and leans back in his chair, taking off his glasses and folding them on the cover of the book. “She looked so _scared_ , Glimmer. Of—of whatever that thing was on the stairs.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So maybe I could help her.” Bow rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands, and Glimmer realizes suddenly that, without his glasses on, Bow looks _exhausted_.

_Has he been staying up thinking about this?_

“Help her _how_?” Glimmer says. “Do an _exorcism_ or something?”

“I don’t know!” Bow says, his voice cracking slightly. “I don’t know what I can do, okay, but I have to _try_. You didn't see that thing, Glimmer. It was—if she’s trapped in there with it, if she’s been trapped for decades—nobody deserves that. Maybe I can’t do anything about it, but I have to _try_.” Glimmer sighs heavily.

She should’ve expected this.

Bow is a fixer. He always has been. He’s much less obsessive about it than he used to be, but he’s so—so _goddamn_ empathetic. He would try to help every single person on the planet if he could. So of _course_ he wants to help the ghost girl. Glimmer should’ve known this was coming since the minute Bow opened that closet and found a person inside. And Glimmer loves him for it, but he’s going to get them both killed.

“Where are we starting?” Glimmer asks. Bow blinks at her.

“We?” he says. Glimmer rolls her eyes.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m not letting you do this _without_ me. I’m your best friend.” She leans forward, a thought occurring to her. “But I’m not helping you with—this stuff.” She gestures at the book and his notebook. “I’m not doing extra homework. I’ll help you exorcise demons or talk to ghosts or summon spirits or whatever, but I’m not doing any fucking _research_.”

“That’s fair,” Bow says. He’s smiling at her, and Glimmer’s stomach does a pleasant little flippy thing. “I’ll let you know when it’s time to start summoning.”

“Cool.” Glimmer grabs her coffee and takes a sip. “I guess we’re gonna help this girl. What was her name again?”

“Catra.”

* * *

**_Bow’s research notes, 9/17/20 - 10/10/20, summarized_ **

_—House purchased 1909 - Ms. Weaver, no first name?_

_—Locals thought she was a weirdo (Collected Journals, p. 217, 219, 346), didn’t leave the house much and was rude to people when she did. Not a popular lady_

_—Weaver had a girl with her - daughter? No school records, but she might’ve been too old. Who was she?_

_—Girl named_ _Adora_ _, not Catra._ _Different name?_

_—Adora described as kind, polite by locals - seen in town even less than Weaver. Homeschooled? Unemployed? Kept hidden? Maybe a servant of some kind_

_—House foreclosed on in 1910 after missed payments, bank records say it was abandoned_

_—House not purchased since, no serious attempts to sell it were made_

_—Bank closed during Great Depression, land was reclaimed by the state. No attempts to auction it off made_

_—1936 - 9 year old boy from town goes missing, friends claim he went to the house_

_—1940 - traveler goes missing from hotel in town; owners say they told him about the house the night before and he mocked the story, possibly went up there_

_—1955 - teenage couple goes missing in house, unclear why they entered_

_—1967 - teenage boy goes missing in house after entering on a dare_

_—1999 - employee of development company looking to buy property goes missing in house, never investigated_

“This is all you’ve got?” Glimmer says when she gets to the end of the half-sheet of notes. She looks up from the binder she’s holding to Bow, who is sitting a few feet away from her on the end of her bed. “You’ve been at it forever.”

“It says _summary_ right there,” Bow says defensively. “You can read the whole binder of primary sources and notes if you want.” Glimmer looks back down at the binder and weighs it in her hands.

“No, thanks,” she decides. “What are the highlights?”

“I’ll show you.” Bow takes the binder back, flipping through it rapidly. He settles on a page near the back and hands it over to Glimmer.

“What am I looking at?” she asks. It’s a messy photocopy, shadowy and hard to read—not to mention the document, whatever it is, is written in a spidery cursive.

“Police report,” Bow says. “From 1910, a few weeks before the foreclosure. The cops went and investigated the house because—well, read it. It’s _nuts_.” Reluctantly, Glimmer looks down at the document once more, squinting at the words.

_9th September 1910_

_Mrs. Ella Reginald, lives down hill from Ms. Weaver, reported strange noises, screaming from house on the 6th. Also described “red lights” in windows. Some concern was raised about fire, but there were no signs of smoke. Mrs. Reginald sent husband Alexander and several unnamed neighbors to house on 8th. They reported no signs of occupation on the first floor._

_Four officers sent to investigate today, 9th. They also found no signs of occupation. Shouts to higher floors remained unanswered. Will leave undisturbed in hopes that residents return._

_Officers reported feeling unsettled in the house. All four described the interior as warm, but one officer was forced to leave mid-investigation due to onset of possible hypothermia. One officer reported “red glow” from stairs to second floor, but did not investigate. Both remaining officers report no signs of the glow, or the cold that struck the first. They did, however, report feeling “terrified”. Unclear why._

_House will be left undisturbed. Any further citizen investigations will be treated as trespassing. No further police action is necessary._

“Wait,” Glimmer says, lowering the binder. “So they just didn’t go upstairs? Like, ever?”

“Nope,” Bow says. “The cops never went back. The house got foreclosed on a few months later because nobody paid the bills, and the bank people didn’t go upstairs, either.”

“So _nobody_ has been upstairs since 1910,” Glimmer says. “These cops really suck at their jobs, huh?” Bow snorts.

“Definitely,” he says. “But the bank investigators are what weirds me out. I mean, these guys are taking the house to sell it, right? They have a financial incentive to go upstairs and make sure everything is okay. And they _don’t_. They check out the first floor, feel a little freaked out, and immediately go back to the bank to write their report. They say the house is in fine condition to be sold, but mention that it seems inhospitable. And then the house is _never_ sold. That bank went under in the 30s, so the state technically owns the land and the house now, but it’s never been sold, or torn down, or developed. Just _nothing_. It’s been sitting in government hands untouched for almost a hundred years. And the one time somebody thought about developing it—well, you read the disappearance summary.”

“Definitely really fucking weird,” Glimmer agrees. She looks back down at the police report, flipping the page to see if there’s anything she’s missed, and she gasps when she sees what’s on the next page. “ _Bow_ ,” she says. “You found a _photo_?” It’s a simple portrait: an older woman and a teenage girl, both in old-fashioned clothes.

“I think so,” Bow says. “The source was some weird, unsourced history blog, so I don’t know if it’s real, but I thought it was worth including.” He leans over, tapping the image of the woman with his fingertip. “If it’s real, that’s Ms. Weaver,” he says. “And the girl is Adora.” Glimmer tilts her head, examining the photo. Ms. Weaver looks normal enough: she has dark hair pulled back in a bun that looks painfully tight; her shoulders are square and straight; her hands are clasped in front of her. She’s giving the camera a severe look that borders on a frown.

She doesn’t look like someone Glimmer would get along with.

Adora, for her part, has what Glimmer thinks is blonde hair—it’s hard to tell from the old photograph—tied back in a similar bun, although it forms an odd sort of bump above her forehead first. Her shoulders are a little hunched, forwards and away from Ms. Weaver. She’s looking at the camera with wide, almost curious eyes. She’s very pretty.

“That’s not the girl we saw,” Glimmer says.

“I know,” Bow says. “I don’t know _who_ we saw. I looked for any records of a girl named Catra. That’s actually where I started looking, before I looked into the house. But I couldn’t find anything. No school records, nobody from town wrote anything about her. And I have no idea where she was before she and Ms. Weaver moved to Bright Moon, because I can’t find shit on Ms. Weaver except that she bought a house and then vanished. Catra is a dead end, and anything from before they moved here is one giant question mark.”

“…Huh.” Glimmer closes the binder and hands it back to Bow. “So where do we go from here? Is there anything else you can look for?”

“Not really,” Bow says with a shrug. “At least, not with the information we have right now.” Glimmer does _not_ like where that sounds like it’s going.

“Bow,” she says in a warning tone.

“I want to go back to the house.”

“ _Bow_.” Glimmer shakes her head. “There’s a fucking _demon_ in there.”

“We don’t know that it’s a demon,” Bow says. “It could be—“

“It could be something _else_ that can kill us,” Glimmer points out. “ _Clearly_ it’s been killing people, if this list of disappearances is anything to go by.”

“I—well, yeah,” Bow says. “But there’s nothing else I can find with what I’ve got, Glimmer. I need more information, and that house is the only place to get it.”

“And you want to risk our _lives_ to look?” Glimmer says. “I want to help, too, Bow, but that girl—Catra—whoever she is, she’s already dead. Is helping her worth it?” Bow shrugs helplessly.

“I have to try,” he says. “You don’t have to come with me.”

“Of fucking _course_ I’m going with you,” Glimmer says. She sighs deeply. “When do you want to do it?”

“In a few weeks,” Bow says. “I, uh, I ordered something online that might help, and we should wait till it gets here.”

“I swear to God, if you bought a ouija board—“

* * *

“Here,” Bow says. He holds something out to Glimmer across the central console of the Jeep’s front seat. Glimmer takes it. It’s a flashlight, but it has… “That’s a hand crank on the side,” Bow says. “It recharges the batteries. I figured ghosts can’t put the lights out if we can just turn them back on.”

“Makes sense.” Glimmer turns the crank a few times and flips the switch on the side of the flashlight. Sure enough, a bright beam comes out. “This is completely insane, though.”

“I know,” Bow says, nodding. They both look out the windshield, up the hill towards the house looming above them.

“Why did we decide to do this at night?” Glimmer asks. It’s even darker out than it had been last time, since the moon is waning instead of full.

“Spirits tend to be more active at night,” Bow says matter-of-factly. Glimmer glances over at him, raising an eyebrow.

“Uh huh,” she says. “Where’d you read that? _Goosebumps_?”

“A whole bunch of ghost hunting forums.” Glimmer _really_ wants to make fun of that, but Bow is preoccupied, digging through the backpack he brought with him. It looks full; Glimmer isn’t entirely sure with _what_.

“What are you— _Jesus_!” White noise explodes from the backpack, and Glimmer jumps in her seat, the flashlight clattering to the floor. The volume drops dramatically, going from an all-out assault to an annoying buzz.

“Sorry,” Bow says, pulling the offending object out of his backpack. It kind of looks like a handheld radio, small and black with a bunch of knobs on the front. “It’s a spirit box.”

“What the _fuck_ is a spirit box?” Glimmer asks. “And can you turn it off?” Bow does so, wincing apologetically.

“It’s like a radio,” he says. “It scans frequencies super fast, so you can’t hear what’s actually being broadcasted on any of them. The idea is that ghosts can speak through it by manipulating the radio waves.”

“That sounds like _bullshit_ ,” Glimmer says. “Is _this_ what you ordered online?”

“Seeing ghosts also sounds like bullshit,” Bow points out, and he’s got her there. “It wasn’t that expensive. If it doesn’t work, we’ll find something else.” Glimmer shakes her head.

“I’m not gonna get my hopes up,” she says. She retrieves her flashlight from the floor and begins turning the hand crank anxiously. “Should we get going?” There’s no point in sitting in the car getting more and more scared.

“Yeah,” Bow says. “Here.” Glimmer looks back over at him. This time, he’s holding out a cross necklace.

“Okay, this is getting weird,” Glimmer says, wrinkling her nose. “Neither of us are religious. Besides, they’re ghosts, not _vampires_.”

“I’m covering all my bases,” Bow says. “Just put on the necklace, alright? I’ve already got mine on.” He taps a chain around his neck that Glimmer hadn’t noticed before, and sure enough, he’s wearing a small, steel cross on a necklace.

“Fine,” Glimmer says. She takes her necklace and puts it on, tucking it under her shirt.

“Okay,” Bow says. He zips up his backpack and turns to look at her. “I guess we’d better go.” Glimmer nods and climbs out of the car.

The walk up the hill is a lot quieter this time. They keep their flashlights on, ready to crank if need be, but neither of their lights die, or even flicker. Eventually, when they’re leaving the woods, Glimmer reaches out for Bow’s hand. She’d held his hand a lot last time they were here. She had needed the comfort. Bow always makes her feel safe.

The house’s front porch is unchanged from the last time they were here, several weeks before. The paint is as bright white as it was before. The windows are dark, without a sign of movement.

“Okay,” Bow says. He takes his hand from Glimmer’s and settles it on the doorknob. He looks over at her. “You ready?”

“Just open the damn door,” Glimmer says. Her heart is pounding. Knowing that there really is something— _multiple_ somethings—lurking in the house makes it so much worse.

Bow pushes open the door and steps through.

Glimmer follows immediately after him, closing the door behind her. They look around the entryway again, their flashlight beams sweeping across ancient carpet, walls, ceilings. They can see much more clearly by flashlight than they could by the moon last time, but Glimmer sees nothing of interest. Just dust, wood, and more dust.

“So what are we looking for?” Glimmer asks, turning to Bow and squinting in an attempt to make out his face without shining her flashlight at him.

“Kind of anything,” Bow says. “Photos, old journals or notes. Any identifying information, or anything that might tell us what happened.”

“Should probably look somewhere other than the entryway.” Glimmer glances, just for a moment, off to their right, down the hallway that leads to the stairs. She shivers. She is _not_ going back down there if she can help it.

Bow seems to feel the same, because without even mentioning it, he starts off down the left hand hallway. Glimmer follows, looking around the hallway as best she can. The walls are bare.

“I think this is the kitchen,” Bow says as the hallway leads them into a room. “Or the dining room.” Glimmer scans with her flashlight. She’s more inclined to lean towards the second option. There’s a table in the center of the room, lined with ornate wooden chairs. In the middle of the table is a bowl.

“Hey, look at this,” Glimmer says. She steps forward, getting a better look at the bowl, and Bow follows.

Sitting in the bowl are several pieces of what was, at one point, fruit. It’s dried out beyond recognition, but Glimmer thinks she might see the stem of an apple, somewhere in there.

“That can’t be a hundred years old,” Bow says. “It takes, like, weeks or months for fruit to decompose into nothing. Not a hundred years.”

“Yeah.” Glimmer frowns at it. “But I mean, that’s if it’s somewhere that would…decompose it. No wind or heat or cold or animals in here. Bacteria, I guess, but maybe that’s not enough by itself.”

“…I guess.” Bow doesn’t sound happy with that answer, but Glimmer’s brain is running with her last point, rapidly connecting dots.

“Bow, there’s _nothing_ alive in here,” she says. “Like you said the first time we came, there should be bats or mice or something. Or at least bugs. I haven’t seen a single _spider_. That’s _weird_.” Bow looks deeply unsettled now. “If whatever’s in this house kept _everything_ living out of it, couldn’t this fruit have dried naturally?”

“Maybe,” Bow says. “I don’t know.” He points his flashlight at the bowl again, and Glimmer can just barely see his frown through the darkness. “Why would…whatever is keeping stuff out of the house let _us_ in, then? Or the neighbors, or cops, or bank people back in the day?And all the people who disappeared in here?”

“I don’t know.” Glimmer looks back at the bowl. “I guess we should keep looking, right?” The desiccated fruit is interesting, but it doesn’t help them much.

“Right.” Bow wanders away, headed for the doorway on the other side of the dining room. Glimmer stays close behind him. She isn’t quite as on edge as she was on the front porch, but she hasn’t calmed down much, either. She’d rather keep him as close as possible.

Glimmer reaches out and takes Bow’s hand again. He glances down at her. Glimmer keeps her eyes fixed firmly forwards, where her flashlight beam is illuminating the short hallway they’re walking into. She doesn’t want to admit how unsettled she is, and more than that, she doesn’t want to admit how _safe_ Bow makes her feel. That would be too much, too close to an admission of…other things.

“Okay, _this_ is the kitchen,” Bow says as they step into the next room. Glimmer is inclined to agree. There’s a low countertop made of dark wood that might, at one point, have been polished. It’s covered in such thick dust now that Glimmer can’t tell. There are cabinets, too, some at head height, some down below. “I wonder what’s in them,” Bow says, aiming his flashlight at one of the cabinets. Glimmer lets go of his hand and steps forward.

“Let’s find out,” she says. She gets up on her tiptoes and opens the cabinet. “Plates,” she announces as Bow’s flashlight beam comes over her shoulder and settles on the contents. “Exciting.”

“Yeah, I…don’t know what I was expecting.”

“ _Ghost_ plates, maybe?” Glimmer says. Bow half-laughs, half-sighs, and walks around her, picking the top plate off of the stack. He examines it closely. Glimmer has no idea what could _possibly_ be interesting about it.

“I wonder if these are valuable,” Bow says eventually, setting the plate on the countertop. “It looks like a whole china set, and it’s super old.”

“You wanna sell them on eBay?” Glimmer asks.

“No,” Bow says. “That’s, like, _asking_ to get cursed.” He has a point there. “It’s just surprising that no one has come in and stolen them in the past hundred years,” he says. “I mean, we can’t be the first idiots to come poke around in the kitchen.”

“Maybe the demon thing killed everybody else,” Glimmer says. “All those disappearances. We might be the first to make it out alive.” She wants it to be a joke, but it comes out macabre and grim—it’s probably true, after all.

“…Yeah,” Bow says. He puts the plate back and closes the cabinet. “There’s nothing helpful in here. Let’s move on.”

They explore the rest of the ground floor with a lot less talking than they did the dining room and kitchen. Glimmer has somehow made the mood in the air even worse with her joke, and the exploring gets boring pretty fast. As it turns out, looking around dark room filled with dust after dark room filled with dust isn't the most exciting thing Glimmer has done in her life, even if the rooms are in a haunted house. They explore what seems to be a living room, filled with dusty furniture and a few small tables; an ancient bathroom with a mirror that makes Bow jump when he notices it; and, attached to the very back of the house, a small room with empty plant pots and a glass ceiling.

“Someone here liked to garden, I guess,” Bow says. He shines his flashlight upwards, through the windows on the ceiling. They’re completely clear, not a crack in sight, or even a fallen leaf resting somewhere on their slanted surface. “Those _definitely_ shouldn’t be clean,” Bow points out.

“Maybe the ghosts clean the windows in their free time,” Glimmer says. “They’re probably really bored if they’ve been here for a hundred years.”

“I wonder if they’re still…sane,” Bow says. “I mean, the girl, Catra, she was hiding from that…thing, the first night we were here. If she’s been hiding from it for a hundred years…”

“Well, we can try asking her,” Glimmer says. “You wanna try the box thingy?”

“No.” Bow adjusts the straps of his backpack nervously. “Not in here. It feels…” He doesn’t finish the thought, but Glimmer knows what he means. The air in the garden is _oppressive_ , somehow, a constant pressure against Glimmer’s chest, like they’re standing in water instead of air. It makes her skin crawl.

“One of the other rooms?” Glimmer says. “The living room, maybe? Since that’s probably where they spent a lot of time.” Bow hesitates for long enough that Glimmer _knows_ he’s about to say something stupid.

“I wanna go upstairs,” he says.

“The place that no one has gone since 1910?” Glimmer says, voice rising. “The place where that—monster came from last time? _That’s_ where you wanna go to say hi to the ghosts?”

“Like you said,” Bow says. “No one has been up there since 1910. And nobody has figured out what happened here since then, either. Maybe it’s the key to figuring this whole thing out.”

“Or maybe that’s where the demons eat people who come into the house.”

“Maybe.” Bow looks determined. “But we came prepared. We’ve got the necklaces, and I brought—look, I’ll show you.” He slips his backpack off one shoulder and unzips it, digging through it quickly.

He resurfaces with a triumphant look and a bright green squirt gun.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Glimmer can guess _exactly_ where this is going, but she really doesn’t want to be right.

“It’s filled with holy water,” Bow says, and _yep_ , that’s exactly where Glimmer thought he was going. “I only have the one, but you can carry it if you want.”

“No, I’m good.” Glimmer is absolutely not carrying that thing around. Bow looks like an _idiot_. “Let’s go get soul-sucked.” Bow makes a face at her, but zips up his backpack and shoulders it once more. They head out of the garden room, Bow with his flashlight in one hand and the _holy water squirt gun_ in the other.

Glimmer cannot believe that this is her life.

They walk quickly through the rooms they had visited without pausing. There’s nothing of note in them, not even the photographs or papers they had come looking for. Once they reach the long hallway, though, they slow down. Every step towards the staircase at the other end feels like a mistake, and with every one, Glimmer’s heart beats a little bit faster.

“Am I just really weirdly scared right now, or do you feel that too?” she whispers as they pass the entryway. Bow glances down at her.

“I feel it,” he says. He tucks the water gun into his belt and reaches out to take her hand, squeezing tightly. Glimmer is equal parts reassured by the contact and disturbed by the fact that Bow’s hands are trembling just as much as hers are.

Finally, the stairs come into sight.

“Okay,” Bow whispers, talking to himself. “Okay. Up we go.”

“Up we go,” Glimmer echoes. Neither of them take a step towards the stairs. Glimmer’s heart is beating so fast it’s starting to hurt. She can hear her pulse in her ears.

“I get why no one’s gone up there,” Bow says after a minute. Glimmer nods, her throat too tight with fear to form words. “I don’t know if I can. It wasn’t like this last time.” Glimmer squeezes his hand tightly, so tightly it has to hurt him a little bit.

“Maybe the house can tell what we want,” she says. “I don’t know. We can do this, though.” Then, because she’s too scared to think straight and because it feels right, she gets up on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. “We can do this,” she says again as he looks down at her in surprise. “We can.”

“We can,” Bow repeats, and suddenly, Glimmer’s heart slows down a bit, a little bit of the fear settling away. She isn’t sure why, but she isn’t about to wait for it to come back.

She puts her foot on the bottom step. Bow mirrors her, right beside her. Glimmer takes a deep breath, lets it out, and lifts her other foot to the second step.

They climb the stairs like that, hand-in-hand, one at a time. More than once, Glimmer gets a bit dizzy and has to lean against the wall so she doesn’t go tumbling back down. Bow braces his forearm against the handrail, looking almost nauseous with terror.

But finally, _finally_ , they both take their last step onto the second floor, and the moment her shoe makes contact with the floorboards beyond the staircase, the fear in Glimmer’s chest _vanishes_.

“Whoa,” Bow says from beside her. “That’s…”

“Weird,” Glimmer says, nodding. “Let’s look around and get the fuck out of here.” The unnatural fear is gone, and in its absence is normal, fully rational fear stemming from the fact that they’re in a _fucking haunted house_.

Bow slips his hand out of Glimmer’s and redraws his water pistol. They make their way down the hallway the stairs have led them into slowly, examining the walls with their flashlights. It barely looks any different from downstairs: dust, walls, carpet. And, eventually, a closed door to their left.

Glimmer doesn’t like that at _all_. All of the halls and entryways between rooms downstairs had been doorless; they had been able to see exactly what they were walking into each time. _Anything_ could be behind that door. The monster that had almost caught them last time—that horrible, layered, scraping voice—could be back there.

Glimmer wishes she had peeked at the monster last time like Bow did. Whatever he saw had terrified him, but Glimmer has no _idea_ what they’re up against, what Bow is planning to defend them from with a water pistol and some cross necklaces.

“We should go in there, huh,” Bow says.

“We _should_ go home,” Glimmer mutters. “You have the water gun. You go first.” Bow nods. He grabs the doorknob and turns. The door opens easily, creaking quietly on its hinges, and Glimmer peeks over Bow’s shoulder as he shines his flashlight into the room.

“It’s empty,” Bow says, glancing over his shoulder at her.

“Weird,” Glimmer says. She slips into the room beside him and flicks her flashlight across the walls, finding them blank and unmarked. Then she aims her flashlight at the floor on the opposite end of the room—

—and lets out an ear piercing scream.

“ _Fuck_!” Bow shouts. He whirls around to face the same way he is, blindly pulling the trigger of his squirt gun.

A thin stream of water falls across the forehead of the body on the floor.

“Oh my god.” Glimmer can’t breathe. “Oh my god.” Bow lowers his squirt gun slowly, aiming his flashlight on the floor right next to Glimmer’s.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bow says again, in a whisper this time.

On the floor is…a corpse, lying on its back. Glimmer has never seen a dead body before, and she doesn’t know what they’re supposed to look like, but this one is old, she’s sure of that much. Its skin is taut and dry, the flesh that was once behind it long since disintegrated. Its lips are peeled back, revealing a set of decaying teeth. Its hair—blonde. Blonde hair, Glimmer realizes, and that feels important. Its long hair is wiry and flat, spread out on the floor beneath its head. It’s wearing a dress that falls loose and too large over its stick-like limbs. And there, beyond its ancient shoes, is…

“Is that another one?” Glimmer whispers. There’s bile pushing at the back of her throat.

“I think there’s three of them,” Bow says. He sounds just as sick as Glimmer feels. “Look.” Despite every part of her body and mind begging her not to, Glimmer looks. Bow’s flashlight is on a second corpse behind the first. This one has brown hair, falling around its shoulders where it’s half-propped up against the wall, and wears a dress much like the first body.

Glimmer turns her flashlight back to the blonde. She takes a deep breath before she looks past it, towards the third and—God, she _hopes_ —final body. This one is face down on the floor, which Glimmer is thankful for. The sight of the teeth of the first two, and the empty eye sockets—she swallows back vomit and pushes the image to the back of her mind.

The third corpse has black hair. The arms are splayed out above the head, as if they’re reaching for the blonde body. Glimmer catches sight of long, talon-like fingernails with mummified skin receding away from them and turns away.

“I—I think it’s the residents,” Bow says. He’s still staring at the bodies. Glimmer doesn’t know how he can stomach it. “The hair colors fit to—to Ms. Weaver and Adora, if that photo was real. And the brown hair…could be Catra. The ghost.”

“I…” Glimmer can’t come up with words. She can’t—they’re _dead_. Dead and rotted bodies on the floor. She and Bow need to _leave_.

Bow sticks his squirt gun in his belt and starts digging through his backpack. Glimmer watches numbly for a moment, wondering what he could possibly be looking for.

He pulls out the spirit box.

“You’re kidding,” Glimmer says. Bow looks up at her, blinking in confusion. “Bow, we need to—to call the cops or something! We just found _dead bodies_!”

“Hundred-year-old dead bodies,” Bow points out. “From a disappearance that’s already been investigated and closed! What are the cops going to do? It’s not like they can perform autopsies on them. They’ll just bury them or cremate them.”

“So what are _you_ going to do?” Glimmer asks, waving at the box. “Ask them how they’re doing? If being _dead_ is a good time?”

“What killed them, for starters,” Bow says. “What that monster is. What _happened_ a hundred years ago. The cops couldn’t tell us that.” He makes a good point. Glimmer glances over at the bodies again and immediately regrets it, swallowing hard against her own nausea.

“Do we have to do it here?” Glimmer asks. “With the…”

“If this is where they died, this is where the spirits will be most active,” Bow says.

“More knowledge from the ghost hunting forums?” She’s trying to bait him into bickering. Anything to get her mind off of the _dead bodies_ across the room. He doesn’t take the bait; he just nods solemnly. “Alright,” Glimmer says. “Let’s get it over with.”

Bow switches the box on. Immediately, loud static fills the room. It’s much quieter than it initially was in the car, but the volume still makes Glimmer wince. It cuts through the still, silent air of the house like a signal, saying _hey creepy stairs demon, we’re over here_.

“Okay,” Bow says. “Uh…I guess we just talk to it.” Glimmer says nothing. _She_ isn’t going to talk to the ghosts. “Is anyone here?” Bow says, raising his voice. “Can you speak to us?” The static continues blaring. “Can you speak to us?” Bow says again, firmer this time. More static. Glimmer is about to tell him to give up when—

“ _Hello_.” The voice is garbled, pitchy and strange and inhuman, but it’s a _voice_. Unmistakably, a voice.

“Holy shit,” Bow whispers.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Glimmer agrees.

“Uh, hi,” Bow says to the ghosts. “Could you tell us who you are?” Static. Not a single flicker or pause in the noise, not another word. Glimmer wonders if the voice was a fluke. “Okay, you don’t have to answer that,” Bow says. “Could you—could you tell us how you died?” He looks at Glimmer, eyes wide and scared. Glimmer wants to cross the room and take his hand, but she’s frozen in place, listening to the static.

“ _Not dead_.” The voice again, a little clearer this time. Glimmer inhales sharply.

_Not dead?_ She looks across the room, half-expecting one of the corpses to get up off the floor. None of them move, of course. They’re just dust and bone and mummified skin.

“Not dead?” Bow echoes, looking just as confused as Glimmer. “What do you mean? What happened to you?”

“ _Not dead_ ,” the voice says. “ _Gone_.”

* * *

“I have a spell I want to try,” Bow says, sitting down opposite Glimmer. She looks up from her lunch, blinking at him.

“You have a _what_ ,” she says.

“A spell,” Bow repeats. “I mean, I don’t know if magic is, like, real, but ghosts are, apparently, and the internet thinks magic is real, so it’s worth a shot.” He sounds defensive. He doesn’t need to be. Glimmer isn’t about to argue with him about the existence of magic. She probably—no, _definitely_ —knows more about that than he does.

“What do you want to try?” Glimmer says. “Do we have to go back to that house? And do we have to talk about this in the school cafeteria?”

“We do have to go back,” Bow says, ignoring Glimmer’s first and third questions entirely.

“Bow,” Glimmer says. They had gotten out of the house over the weekend unscathed, but Glimmer hadn’t slept at all that night. The broken voice coming through the static of the spirit box, the warm, stale air in that room, the _bodies_ —

Glimmer sets her lunch aside, no longer hungry.

“I know,” Bow says, and Glimmer sees her own haunted look reflected in his eyes. “I don’t want to go back either. But we have to if we want to try this out, and—I don’t know, Glimmer. This isn’t over. You know?” Glimmer knows. Bow isn’t satisfied with what he’s learned so far, and honestly, Glimmer isn’t either. She’s seen the bodies. She wants to know what killed them.

The spirit box hadn’t been able to answer many of their questions. It had claimed it was _not dead_ , _gone_ and had either been unable or unwilling to elaborate on that. Bow had asked it about the… _thing_ in the house, which Glimmer has still not seen, and the voice had called it a _monster_ , which really didn’t clarify anything. Not long after that, it had stopped answering entirely. Glimmer and Bow had left the house having only learned that the disappeared owners had died in the upstairs room, and that they don’t think they’re dead at all. That knowledge has only generated more questions.

“What do you want to try?” Glimmer says again. Bow’s anxious, defensive expression fades as he realizes that Glimmer is agreeing to try.

“Well, this is going to sound completely insane,” he says. “But the ghost did they say they’re not dead, so it might work.” Glimmer does _not_ like the sound of that. “Hopefully they’re right about not being, like, totally dead, because everything I’ve read about necromancy basically says you really shouldn’t do it—“

“ _Bow_.”

“I wanna try to bring them back,” Bow says. Glimmer buries her face in her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was originally not going to include the last scene of them in the cafeteria, and end on the spirit box saying 'not dead, gone'. it would've been wonderfully mean. but i needed to include the last scene, so you get a slightly less unbearable cliffhanger.
> 
> again, thank you guys so much for the love on last chapter, and especially everyone who commented their appreciation for the horror aspect of this. it's a genre i don't generally write for and i'm kind of unsure working with, so it meant the world that it genuinely spooked some people.
> 
> @bonpop on tumblr also did fanart of this chapter!! here it is:  
> 
> 
> i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan and on twitter @sevens_evan (though i'm not on twitter much) if you want to talk to me! i write prompts on tumblr sometimes too. check out my other catradora and glimbow fics if you like this one.
> 
> please leave a comment if you liked this chapter! i wanna keep up the motivation y'all gave me last time and keep posting this quickly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter where a lot of insane shit happens and i beg you guys to just go with it. i know where i'm going with this i promise!!! suspend your disbelief. it'll pay off.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

Adora tightens her hand around Catra’s. Catra squeezes right back, and the familiar, odd sensation of half-contact that is all their spirits can manage goes tingling up Adora’s arm. Neither of them speak, or even move, in the little corner of the upstairs room that they’re hiding in.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

God knows how many years, and Adora still hasn’t figured out the patterns of when Shadow Weaver’s footsteps are audible. Maybe it has to do with the demons inside her; maybe some make noise and some don’t. Maybe she just chooses to walk instead of levitate when she wants to scare them.

_Thump. Thump. Thu—_

The footsteps cut off. Adora looks over at Catra, frowning. Catra’s half-there, half-not form looks back at her, eyes present in smears of blue and yellow. Adora is used to her vision at this point, the way the world floats and flashes, the way that everything appears in shifting strokes of color in the space that they’re in, somewhere between living and dead. She doesn’t mind it, except that it keeps her from seeing Catra.

_Thump thump thump thump thumpthumpthump_.

These are different footsteps. Not the slow, heavy drag of Shadow Weaver’s footfalls, and not in the hallway outside their hiding place, where Shadow Weaver had been walking; no, these are lighter, faster, and echoing from the staircase. More importantly, Adora realizes after a moment that there’s two sets of them. There’s someone in the house.

Adora climbs to her feet. Catra moves at the same time, likely having the same thought. They rarely need to speak anymore to understand each other. They walk through the wall of the room where they’re hiding—Ms. Weaver’s old bedroom—and into the hallway.

There are people in front of them. Two of them; a tall black boy and a much shorter girl, both around the age that Catra and Adora were when—well, when age ceased to matter. The girl appears to have _pink_ hair, which Adora has to assume is a quirk of her degraded vision, interpreting whatever the actual color may be as a vibrant, unnatural shade of pink. These particular people have been in the house before. The first time, only Catra saw them, when they forced open the downstairs closet. The second, Adora saw them as well, when she spoke to them briefly through their odd, broken radio. It had taken all of her energy just to hear them properly, and she hadn’t gotten to answer most of their questions.

Adora can’t imagine why they’re back. Anybody who leaves the house with their life once never returns. Plenty of others don’t leave at all. But these two have come back for not only a second, but a _third_ exploration. They must be very brave.

Catra and Adora, still hand in hand, follow the other two down the hall. Adora realizes very quickly that they’re headed for the room with the bodies. Catra must realize it as well, because she hesitates for a moment, tugging on Adora’s hand. Adora turns to face her, for all the good it does—Catra’s vision is no better than hers. Neither of them can make out the other’s face, but Adora still knows what’s wrong: Catra hates that room. She hates their bodies, spread out on the floor and aged beyond recognition. Adora can hardly blame her for it.

“We should follow,” Adora says quietly. Her voice sounds warped and wavering, as it always does. Her ears are as affected as her eyes. She hasn’t heard her own true voice—or Catra’s, for that matter—in…however long they’ve been here. “If only to warn them. Shadow Weaver won’t be gone for long.” Their tormentor, oddly enough, hasn’t tried to hurt these particular living yet. They almost seem to repel her.

Without a word, Catra begins to walk again, her hand tightening around Adora’s as they head towards the room with the bodies. The boy and the girl are standing in front of the closed door, talking quietly to one another. They don’t seem any more excited about entering than Catra does. Adora tries her best, but she can’t make out their words. The sounds come through jumbled out of order, and it’s an exercise in frustration to even try to sort them out.

Finally, the boy pushes the door open, and the both of them step through. Adora and Catra walk in after them, half in the doorway, half in the walls. The room is just as it has been since the day they…changed. Ms. Weaver’s body reaching forwards, Catra’s body falling back, Adora’s body firmly between them. Adora doesn’t look at the corpses long. She’s less bothered by them than Catra is, but she doesn’t _like_ them.

The two visitors sit down in the middle of the empty floor. The boy digs through the bag he brought with him, pulling out a few small candles, a small container with words on the side that Adora can’t read with the way her vision shifts, and a few sticks of chalk.

When the boy pours the stuff out of the container, and Adora realizes that it’s salt, she decides that she doesn’t like where this is going at _all_.

“They’re going to do magic,” Catra murmurs from beside her. “What could they be planning to do?” Adora has no idea. She feels nervous, like she’d be trembling if the form she’s in could do that. She _hates_ magic. More than anything, she hates _this_ kind of magic: the kind that comes from symbols and chanting and making deals with forgotten gods. There are other, better kinds—though, she supposes, these two have no way of knowing that.

The visitors begin to chant. They’ve surrounded themselves with a salt circle and drawn a symbol on the floor between them. They’re holding hands across it, over a few burning candles, and reciting… _something_. Adora wishes she could hear properly. She assumes they’re speaking Latin, and she knows some. If she could hear properly, it would at least give her a _clue_ as to what to expect.

The chanting goes on for awhile. The strangers pause for several minutes, talking to each other in low tones that Adora again wishes she could make out, and then they resume. Adora swears the candles burn higher and brighter by the minute, flames reaching several feet into the air. But that can’t be right; if that were true, the fire would be licking the visitors’ arms, and neither of them seem to be in pain. It must be a trick of her vision. Catra shifts closer to Adora’s side, pressing their shoulders together, and the odd, touching-not-touching sensation tingles up and down Adora’s side.

Lord, she wishes she could hold Catra with her body again.

The chanting stops. Nothing happens, and Adora glances over at Catra, wondering if she has any idea what the spell has done. But Catra doesn’t speak, and Adora can’t see her face to guess at what she’s thinking.

Then something begins to _tug_ at Adora’s chest. Her free hand flies upwards, pressing against her sternum, searching for a hook, a tether, a physical sign of the force. There’s nothing there. Just a constant _tug_ against her ribs that’s growing stronger by the second.

“Adora?” Catra says, and Adora realizes that she’s taken several steps forward. Their hands have pulled apart. “What are you doing?”

“There’s something…” Adora shakes her head. The tug has been joined by a ringing in her ears.

“Adora!” Catra is stepping forwards after her now. Adora isn’t trying to walk. She _swears_ she isn’t trying to walk. But her feet move anyway, taking her backwards across the room, towards her dried-out body. “Adora, _stop_!”

“I—I…” Adora can’t. She turns away from Catra, looking down at her body, which is suddenly at her feet. It’s grotesque, hollow and dry, and Adora tries to look away from it.

Instead, the tug drags her to her knees. One of her hands lands in her dead body’s chest, sinking through it and to the floor.

“ _Adora_!” Catra’s voice is close behind her now. Adora manages to flop onto her back as the pull drags her even farther down, and for a moment, she can see Catra _almost_ clearly.

Then the tug pulls her into the corpse. The fingertips of her spirit and her body align, and a strange, hot sensation floods her chest. Her ears begin to ring, and she closes her eyes against a darkness that seems to be encroaching on the edges of her vision.

For the first time in a century, Adora takes a breath.

“Holy shit,” someone says from across the room. The voice is unfamiliar, the cadence of the words a little… _off_. “Oh my God, it—it actually _worked_.”

Adora sits up. The movement…hurts. Somewhere in her abdomen, it hurts a little bit. As if she has muscles pulling at one another, and not just an empty, translucent form. She opens her eyes, and can’t hold in a gasp.

Everything is _clear_. The walls are solid and unwavering. The candlelight in the room is soft and flickering, but it doesn’t stretch or distort itself before Adora’s eyes. She can _see_ again.

Excited, Adora turns towards Catra. She can’t think of anything else she’d rather see first. But there’s nothing in the space that Catra was. Instead, just beyond that empty space, the two visitors sit on the floor with open mouths, staring at… _her_?

Adora feels a sinking sensation in her chest, one that she hasn’t felt since she was alive. Slowly, she looks down, holding her hands up in front of her face.

They’re solid. They’re opaque. They’re _real_.

“Hi,” the boy says from across the room. He has a nice voice, not too deep or too high—and, for all the fear and confusion in his tone, gentle. “Um…are you Adora?” Adora lowers her hands and stares at them.

“Am I…” Her voice comes out rough, but given that she hasn't drunk a thing since she vacated her body, it isn’t too bad. That goes for most of her body, actually; she isn’t a dried-out corpse with a voice and a soul. She has breath again, breath and flesh and blood. Her hands are warm, pale and soft and…

“Am I alive?” Adora asks the visitors.

“I…think so,” the boy says.

“Who are you?” Adora asks, glancing between the two visitors. She’d like to thank them by name, before she asks them to do… _whatever_ it is that they’ve done to her to Catra as well.

Neither of the visitors get the chance to answer. A deep red light is growing in the corner of the room, immediately drawing all of their eyes to it. Adora’s heart begins to race, and she presses a hand to her chest, begging it to slow. It’s a horrible sensation. Adora hasn’t felt anything inside her in years.

“What is _that_?” the girl asks. She’s pushed herself up onto her feet, taking several steps backwards, away from the growing light.

“We have to run,” Adora says. The visitors look at her with confused, terrified eyes. Adora pushes herself to her feet. The feeling of _muscles_ in her limbs again is—too unsettling to think about at the moment. “We have to run!”

“Why?” the girl asks, eyes flicking between Adora and the light in the corner. It’s beginning to take shape now, long and tall. “What is that?”

“ _That_ is Shadow Weaver,” Adora says. “Please, run!”

“Okay,” the boy says. He’s on his feet too, now, having blown out the few candles and pulled his bag onto his back. “C’mon, let’s go.” Adora blinks and realizes that that statement includes her.

_She can go_. And more than that, she _should_. Soon. She’s _human_ now, somehow, and she knows what happens when Shadow Weaver catches humans. She’s seen it enough times. She doesn’t think she’ll go back to being a spirit if she dies that way.

The two visitors hurry out the door of the room with the bodies. Adora follows quickly, glancing over her shoulder from the doorway to see the two remaining bodies on the floor: Ms. Weaver, reaching out towards Catra by the wall, now with nothing between them.

The visitors run down the stairs. Adora stumbles down after them, each step a lesson in learning how to walk again. She hasn’t had to bother with things like coordination in—in—she’ll have to ask them, later. What year it is. How long she’s been…gone.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

Adora’s heart leaps into her throat at the familiar sound. It’s so much _worse_ without the filter of almost-death over her ears. Shadow Weaver is moving through the hallway on the second floor, headed for the staircase.

“Hurry!” the boy calls over his shoulder. He’s standing at the front door, holding it open and lighting the path between them with some kind of handheld lantern that Adora doesn’t recognize. She tries to move faster, nearly tripping over her own feet, and then over her skirt.

When she reaches the door, the boy steps outside. Adora goes to follow him, but pauses with one foot on the threshold. She hasn’t left, hasn’t been _able_ to leave in…

“Come on!” the boy says. The girl is already all the way down the steps and halfway across the field between the house and the forest, her form clearly visible in the light of the full moon. Adora glances over her shoulder, back into the house. She can still hear Shadow Weaver’s footsteps somewhere in the distance, and she can picture what Catra must look like right now: desperately looking for a hiding place, taking advantage of Shadow Weaver’s temporary distraction to tuck herself away in a corner. Alone, this time, without Adora coming to join her.

“I’ll come back for you,” Adora says into the house. She hopes that Catra can hear her, wherever in the house she may be. “I promise.” She turns and steps out of the house.

The boy slams the door behind her, and the footsteps fade into nothing.

“Come on,” the boy says again. He’s already crossing the porch with hurried steps.

“We don’t have to run anymore,” Adora says as she follows. “Shadow Weaver can’t leave the house.” The boy gives her a strange look, and Adora is about to ask again who he is when they practically walk into the girl. Adora is a little surprised; she could’ve sworn the field looked like it would take longer to cross than that. But she hasn’t had proper depth perception in a very long time.

“Shadow Weaver,” the boy repeats as they fall into step with the girl, headed down towards the woods. “That’s what you call the monster?” Adora nods. “Any relation to the Ms. Weaver who bought the house?” Adora flinches. How much do these visitors _know_ about her life? First her name, then the name of her—her _whatever_ Ms. Weaver could be called. Guardian? Certainly not a mother.

“Yes,” Adora says. The word comes out curt, and _oh, right,_ Adora has to watch her tone again. Decades of distorted hearing—and only talking to Catra anyway, who never cared about politeness—had done away with that instinct entirely. “I assume you both have some understanding of magic, given that you…saved me.” She doesn’t want to say _raised from the dead_. She wasn’t raised through necromancy; her ability to speak and walk and _think_ indicates that, as well as the fact that she wasn’t quite _dead_ , exactly, in the first place.

“Uh, I mean.” The boy glances at the girl, almost as though he’s looking for guidance. “We know it’s real, I guess.”

“Of course.” Adora glances over her shoulder at the house as they enter the trees. It looks abandoned, empty: dark and tall and quiet over the hilltop. “Ms. Weaver…made a habit of summoning things. The demons took her body. Shadow Weaver is what is left of her.”

“What’s _left_ of her?” the girl says. “Is—are you saying there’s still a _person_ in that monster somewhere?” Adora hesitates. She doesn’t know how much these two know. She doesn’t know how much of her life was remembered, or ever even known in the first place. She can’t imagine it was much. It seems like a miracle to her that anyone still knows her name.

“Ms. Weaver was a monster long before she ever spoke a demon’s name,” Adora says. Neither of the visitors seem to know how to respond to that, so Adora changes the subject. “Who are you?”

“Oh! Right,” the boy says. “I’m Bow. This is Glimmer.” Adora is a little taken aback. She wonders if those are typical names in…

“What year is it?” she asks next. No one speaks for a few moments. Adora looks up from where she’s staring at her feet, trying to navigate the uneven ground of the forest while relearning how to make the muscles in her legs work together, and finds Glimmer and Bow looking at each other again. They seem rather adept at communicating silently.

“It’s 2020,” Glimmer says, looking over at Adora. Adora inhales sharply. She had known that it had been…a long time. Years, decades. But…

“One hundred and ten years,” Adora says softly. Her throat is tightening painfully. She can’t quite remember what that sensation usually means. “We—I was in there for…” They step out of the forest, into a ditch beside a road that is much better maintained than Adora remembers it, and on the road… “What _is_ that?” Adora says.

“My car,” Bow says, which _almost_ makes sense to Adora. The large, blocky shape does seem to be an automobile, if the wheels and the cabin are anything to go by, but it’s unlike any car Adora has ever seen.

Which makes sense, she supposes. The world must’ve changed _incomprehensibly_ in the years that she’s been gone.

“Let’s get in,” Glimmer says. “It’s fucking cold out here.” Bow reaches into his pocket, and suddenly, the car beeps loudly. Adora jumps in place, drawing both Glimmer and Bow’s attention.

“Right,” Bow says. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Uh, I have a button that unlocks the car doors.” He pulls a ring of keys from his pocket and shows Adora a black, vaguely rectangular… _thing_ that’s attached to the base of one of the keys. It has three little buttons on it with symbols that Adora doesn’t recognize.

“…Huh.” Adora can’t really think of anything to say but that. Everything she’s looking at right now is impossibly far removed from anything she experienced in her lifetime—her _first_ lifetime, she reminds herself. She’s alive again now.

“Um…you can get in the back,” Bow says, nodding at the auto. Glimmer has already disappeared around the other side. Adora steps up to the second door on the side of the vehicle and pulls it open.

“Oh,” she whispers. The inside has lit up, now that the door is open. She looks for the source of the light and finds a small, glowing square embedded in the ceiling of the cab. It has to be some kind of electric light.

Hesitantly, Adora climbs into the backseat and closes the door behind her. In front of her, Glimmer has climbed into the passenger seat, and Bow sits behind the wheel.

“You said this is a car?” Adora says. “Is this what they’re like now?”

“Yeah,” Bow says, looking over his shoulder at her. “Pretty much.” Adora hums in acknowledgement. She can’t think of another question. She has hundreds, of course; she just doesn’t know where to begin asking.

The engine of the car comes to life, growling quietly in the quiet of the cab. It’s much quieter than the one and only car that Adora had ever ridden in, when Ms. Weaver took her home for the first time. Adora glances forwards, and her eyes widen slightly at the sight of the entire front of the car _glowing_. There’s small, brightly colored dials just past the steering wheel, and beside it, in between the two front seats, a glowing rectangle that flashes the word _Jeep_ on it before it fades into a set of dark blue squares, with letters on them that Adora can’t quite read from the backseat.

Adora has _so_ many questions.

“What do we do?” Glimmer says from the front seat. Adora looks over at her, but the conversation doesn’t seem to be directed her way. Glimmer is looking at Bow, eyes wide. “Where do we take her?”

“I have no idea,” Bow hisses back. “I wasn’t expecting the spell to _work_.” He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “We…have to find a place where she can stay for…awhile, I guess.”

“Well, she can’t come to _mine_ ,” Glimmer says. “My mom isn’t going to buy the _check out our new friend who we raised from the dead, also, can she stay here for possibly forever?_ line.”

“Neither are my dads,” Bow says. He slumps back into his seat. “I guess they’re less likely to say _no_.” Glimmer nods. She reaches across the space between the seats, setting her hand on his arm.

“It’s gonna be fine,” she says. “They might be kinda upset, but they’re not gonna get mad at you.” Bow nods in acknowledgement. Glimmer keeps her hand on his arm for a long moment, and Adora watches the exchange curiously. Between the way they seem to talk without talking and the physical contact, she wonders if they’re involved somehow.

“Okay,” Bow says. “We’ll go to mine. And I’ll figure out the rest of this in the morning.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Glimmer lets go of his arm, and the two of them look forwards again, out the front window of the car. In the mirror that hangs down from the ceiling, Adora sees Bow’s eyes flick up, looking at her reflection.

“Make sure to put on your seatbelt, Adora,” he says. Adora blinks.

“My what?”

“Your seatbelt,” Glimmer says. She turns in her seat, looking back at Adora. “See the fabric strap by your left shoulder?” Adora does. “Just stick that in the little buckle—yeah.” Adora buckles the thing across her body, staring down at it in mild confusion. It’s an intuitive enough system of restraint, but she has no idea why she would need it.

“What is it for?” Adora asks. The car begins to move beneath them, and Adora steadies herself against the back of Bow’s seat. It’s a deeply unfamiliar sensation, to be moved without her mind’s input, and to have a body to _feel_ it.

“In case we crash,” Bow says as he pulls the car out onto the road. “It’ll keep you from bouncing around the car or going through a window or something.” Adora does _not_ like that image one bit.

“Is that likely to happen?” she asks.

“Nah,” Glimmer says. “Bow’s a good driver. It’s just…I dunno. It’s what you do in cars, I guess. Better safe than sorry.”

“Hm.” Adora doesn’t comment on the matter further. She feels a little adrift at the moment, in a world whose customs are unfamiliar to her. These two speak English, but it’s…different from the way she speaks it. Something about the rhythm of their speech, and some of the words they use. Their clothes are foreign, and terribly revealing.

Perhaps the difference that strikes Adora most, though, is Glimmer’s hair. It’s still pink—apparently the color was not a fluke of her spirit vision, unless she's somehow developed incredibly bizarre colorblindness while she’s been gone—but the color isn’t the most interesting part. It’s _short_ , like a man’s haircut, with sides that look as though they’ve been trimmed with a razor and a longer, choppy top.

Adora had never considered that a woman could have short hair, at least not short like _that_. She has no idea if Glimmer’s appearance is typical for the world today, but the idea that it would even be _permissible_ creates… _something_ in Adora’s chest. A small feeling that sticks in her ribs and confuses the hell out of her.

Adora looks over her shoulder as the car progresses down the hill. The house stands silent and still behind them, casting a huge shadow in the moonlight that paints the hill black. From this distance, she can’t see the windows clearly, and even if she could, Catra would be invisible to her.

Adora feels a spike of guilt lodge itself in her heart, and knows without trying that she will never be able to remove it.

* * *

“Alright,” Bow says as the car turns off. “We’re here.” Adora peers over his shoulder through the windshield at the house that rises above them. It’s small, painted blue, and honestly, not all that different from the houses Adora remembers, at least from the outside. The architecture is different, but it’s just a house. _Something_ in the world hasn’t changed all that much.

“What are we gonna tell your dads?” Glimmer says, looking over at Bow. Bow shrugs.

“The truth?” he says. “They’re not gonna believe a word of it, but—“

“But you can’t lie for shit,” Glimmer says. She sighs. “Yeah, okay. Looking forward to George and Lance thinking I’m completely fucking insane.” That clinches it. Adora had wondered about the _dads_ , plural, in the car earlier, but she had dismissed it, assuming that language had changed while she was away, and that both parents could be called that now. But…

“Those are both man’s names,” Adora says. “You…have two fathers?” Bow and Glimmer both look back at her, as if remembering she’s there. There’s a long, awkward silence, then Glimmer turns to Bow.

“Oh my God, we have to explain gay people.”

“… _Fuck_.” Bow covers his face with his hands for a moment before looking back at Adora. “Okay, so, you know how usually men are attracted to women? And women are attracted to men?” Adora stares at him.

“Yes,” she says slowly. “I know what attraction is.” Does he think she’s _stupid_?

“Right, duh,” Bow says. “So, sometimes men are attracted to other men, and women are attracted to other women.”

“Yes,” Adora says, and the pieces are starting to fall into place now, although she’s still a little insulted that he assumed she didn’t know what _attraction_ is. She’s outdated, not a _child_. “I know what a homosexual is.” Bow winces.

“Yeah, basically,” he says. “But we don’t really use the word homosexual anymore. And it’s—I mean, I don’t know what your specific life was like, but it’s pretty normal now, compared to then. Being gay, I mean.”

“Normal,” Adora repeats. “So, your—your dads are…your parents. They raised you?”

“Yeah,” Bow says. “They’re married. I was—well, it’s complicated, but some of my siblings are adopted and some aren’t. I have a bunch of siblings, by the way.”

“Huh.” Adora is much less interested in the details of Bow’s family life than she is in his fathers being _married_. “So you can…build a life like that, now,” she says. “As a…gay person. Like anybody else.” Bow nods. He looks _nervous_. Adora has no idea about what. “That’s amazing,” Adora says, and, unbidden, her mind jumps to Catra. She’s loved Catra forever, of course she has, but she had never thought a _life_ was possible. Not one with a house and a ring and a possibility of children.

“Yeah, it is,” Bow says, sounding relieved. “Anyway. We should go inside.” Adora looks down at her seatbelt, wondering how to unbuckle it. She makes a guess and presses on the red section of the buckle. It pops open immediately, and winds back up into the wall of the car.

All three of them climb out of the car. There’s an electric light on the front porch of the house, glowing brightly and illuminating the front steps. Bow and Glimmer exchange a nervous glance, then start their approach. Adora trails behind, still examining the house curiously.

Bow unlocks the front door—this time, with an actual key, instead of a small, black, _loud_ box. He exchanges a final look with Glimmer before stepping into the house. Adora follows close behind the two of them, suddenly intensely curious as to what houses look like now.

They step into a narrow hall lined with shoes. It’s dark enough that Adora has to squint to see anything, but then, Bow flicks a switch on the wall, and the hallway lights up. Adora looks up and finds electric lights on the ceiling, filling the hall with soft, orange-ish light. She’s encountered buildings lit by electricity before, but it wasn’t common when she was alive. She has to assume that’s another thing that’s changed, along with language, hairstyles, clothes, and the general availability of cars.

“Dads?” Bow calls into the house. He and Glimmer both kick off their shoes, pushing them to the edges of the hallway, and Adora follows suit a little uncertainly. Her own shoes look bizarre next to the others, which are brightly colored and made of materials that Adora doesn’t recognize at first glance.

“Bow?” It’s a man’s voice, coming from the other end of the hallway. Another light turns on at the other end, illuminating a large room with furniture and a long, dark green table in it. The source of the voice steps into view. It’s a tall black man, with long hair and glasses. Close behind him is a second man, also with dark skin, though his hair is cut short and he has a mustache.

“Hey,” Bow says. Both the men are already looking at Adora, eyes wide and inquisitive. Adora shifts uncomfortably. “So, this is, uh, this is our…friend. Adora. Adora, that’s George, and that’s Lance. They’re my dads.”

“Hello,” Adora adds in, doing her best to smile politely at them. She hasn’t had to do any of these odd, social dances in a hundred years.

“Right,” Bow says. “I was…hoping that Adora could stay here tonight. And maybe for…a little longer than that.” George and Lance look at each other.

“Bow, what’s going on?” George says.

“It’s complicated,” Bow says, which Adora thinks is _definitely_ underselling the situation. “But she doesn’t have anywhere else to go right now. So…”

“Of course she can stay,” Lance says. He gives Adora a warm, friendly smile, and Adora feels some of the tension leave her limbs. Of the two of them, Lance seems to be the more friendly. “But you are going to have to explain to us what exactly is going on.”

“Yeah,” Bow says, nodding. He doesn’t look excited about the prospect. He turns, looking at Adora and Glimmer. “Glimmer, could you go get Adora set up somewhere? Uh…” He frowns for a moment. “I think all of the bedrooms are full of stuff. You know where we keep the sleeping bags, right? Can you set her up on my floor?”

“I’ve got it,” Glimmer says, nodding. She lowers her voice slightly, so only Bow and Adora can hear, and says, “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Bow mutters. He turns back to his dads. “Can we go talk in the living room?” he asks. The three of them head off into the house, though not before George shoots Adora another perplexed look over his shoulder.

“Alright, come on,” Glimmer says. She grabs Adora’s arm and starts to tug her up the hall. Adora jerks her arm back immediately, heart jumping into her throat. Glimmer looks back at her, blinking in surprise. “Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I should’ve asked first.”

“It’s alright,” Adora says. “I just forgot…” She doesn’t know how to explain it. She had forgotten the _fullness_ of feeling, the way pressure feels against her skin without layers of death’s distortion between herself and another person. She had forgotten that hands are often warm.

“Follow me, alright?” Glimmer says. Adora nods, and they set off down the hallway, into the room. Adora glances around, noting the framed images on the walls and the large, black, narrow box in front of the couch. It looks vaguely like the glowing part of the inside of the car, which Adora had been told is called a _screen_.

Glimmer leads her off to the left and up a set of stairs. It deposits them in what Adora can only assume is a kitchen, and Glimmer pauses, turning around to face her.

“Are you hungry?” she asks, as if it’s only just now occurred to her. “You haven’t eaten in…awhile.” Adora considers it.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “I don’t…think I remember how hunger feels.” Glimmer doesn’t look like she knows what to say to that. Adora can hardly blame her for that.

“Thirsty?” she says instead after a moment. “I can get you some water.” Adora swallows hard and feels an itching ache in the back of her throat.

“Yes,” she decides. “That sounds nice.” Glimmer nods and steps over to one of the cabinets. She has to get on her tiptoes to get it open, and even higher on them to reach the row of glasses on the second shelf. Adora thinks about offering to help, but Catra had been short, too, and she had never liked it when Adora tried to help her reach things.

_And why is Adora thinking about Catra in the past tense?_

“Here you go,” Glimmer says. Adora blinks, and realizes that Glimmer is holding out a glass of water. Adora hadn’t seen her fill it. It feels very much like Adora had earlier, when she crossed the field outside the house and found herself much farther across it than she remembered going. It’s as if time is a little bit slippery, moments falling through Adora’s grasp. She doesn’t remember how to hold onto them.

“Thank you,” Adora says. She takes the water and sips it slowly, wondering if she remembers how to swallow. That’s ingrained, apparently; she has no issue with it. The water is cold, and Adora is struck by the way she can feel it in her throat, and then her stomach. She hadn’t remembered that feeling. “What is all of this?” Adora asks after a moment, gesturing around the kitchen. There’s a shiny, metallic box, taller than Adora herself, that seems to have doors, and a number of objects on the counter that Adora can’t determine the purpose of.

“Well, that’s a fridge,” Glimmer says, gesturing at the box. “It keeps food cold.” Adora frowns. She reaches for one of the door handles with her free hand, then pauses, glancing back at Glimmer.

“May I?” At Glimmer’s nod, Adora pulls the door open. Sure enough, a wave of cold air pours out, and Adora sees rows of containers, along with vegetables wrapped in transparent bags. Those, at least, she recognizes. Lettuce hasn’t ceased to be lettuce in the past one hundred years. “How does it work?” Adora asks, closing the fridge and looking over at Glimmer. Glimmer blinks.

“I have no idea,” she says. Adora frowns.

“Is that not common knowledge?” she asks.

“Not unless you’re a fridge scientist,” Glimmer says. She pauses, like she’s expecting a reaction from Adora. Adora has none to give her. “You know, you’re taking all this pretty well,” Glimmer says after a minute. “Electricity and cars and, y’know, gay people. And people of color, too, actually. Wasn’t everyone super racist when you were alive?” Adora blinks slowly, trying to figure out which part of that to respond to first.

“I have never been the sort to judge anyone who isn’t causing harm,” she says. She holds Glimmer’s gaze, and after a moment, Glimmer nods slightly. Something in her eyes changes, becoming a little less…defensive, maybe. “Electricity did exist when I was alive,” Adora says. “It wasn’t common, but I’ve seen electric lights before. Everything else…it’s unrecognizable.”

“But you’re not freaking out,” Glimmer says. “I feel like if I got dropped into the future, I would lose my mind.” Adora shrugs.

“After a hundred years of the same hallways, I think anything would feel alien to me,” she says. “Perhaps I’ll be paralyzed with fear tomorrow, but at the moment…I think I may be tired.” Glimmer smiles at her, and Adora feels a little bit like she’s achieved something. Bow had been friendly to her from the moment she woke up, and while Glimmer hadn’t been _unfriendly_ , she had certainly been more…reserved.

“Let’s get you a place to sleep, then,” Glimmer says. Adora drains the last of her water, relishing the taste and the cold in her mouth, and then pauses, wondering where to set her glass. “Just put it in the sink,” Glimmer says. She’s already walking away, and Adora obeys quickly before hurrying after her.

Glimmer leads her out of the kitchen, past a long, broad dinner table, and into a hallway. She pauses at a door and pulls it open, revealing a set of shelves. Adora doesn’t fully recognize most of the objects inside the closet, but she can make enough sense of the broom and buckets to understand that at least some of it must be for cleaning. Glimmer grabs a dark blue sack from one of the shelves and closes the closet again before leading Adora down to the end of the hall.

“This is Bow’s room,” Glimmer says as she pushes the door open. “You’re gonna be stuck on his floor for awhile. None of his brothers are home right now, but all their rooms are full of stuff.” She glances at Adora. “He doesn’t snore, though. You’ll sleep fine.” Adora nods. She looks around the room curiously as Glimmer pulls the sleeping bag from its sack and kneels down on the floor to spread it out. The room is clean, with clothes hanging in an open closet and a narrow bed against one wall. There’s a desk, too, covered in papers and a small, rectangular, silvery object. Against the wall by the door, there’s a bookshelf.

“I think that’s the best I’ve got,” Glimmer says, straightening up from the floor. The sleeping bag is laid out on the floor with a pillow placed at the top. Adora has slept on much worse. “I can grab you something to sleep in,” Glimmer says. She steps over to the closet and begins digging through a drawer. She surfaces quickly and holds out a few bundles of fabric. Adora takes them, examining them curiously. There’s a shirt with a white chest and red sleeves that seem as though they would fall somewhere in the middle of her forearms, and a pair of…what seem, to Adora’s eyes, to be underwear. They’re shorts, made out of a porous grey fabric.

“I don’t…” Adora can feel her face flushing warm. “Is this…appropriate?” Glimmer looks confused by the question, then her eyes fall to the shorts and widen in understanding.

“Right,” Glimmer says. “I’m guessing women didn’t usually wear basketball shorts in the 1900s, huh?”

“Not really,” Adora says. Her voice is smaller than she wants it to be. She feels like a prude. “They seem revealing.” Glimmer smiles a bit at that, though Adora doesn’t get the sense she’s being mocked.

“They’re pretty tame by today’s standards,” Glimmer says. “But you don’t have to wear them. I can find you some pants instead.” She takes the shorts back from Adora. “Do you want a different shirt, too?” Adora glances at the shirt again. It’s a little lower cut than the dress she’s currently wearing, and probably a lot tighter, but it’s nothing that makes her uncomfortable.

“No, this is fine,” she says. “Thank you.” Glimmer nods and heads back to the closet, reemerging with a pair of soft gray pants that look like they’ll probably be rather large on Adora.

“You can change in the bathroom,” Glimmer says. “It’s the next door down on the right. Wait, do you, like, know about indoor plumbing?” Adora laughs.

“Of course,” she says. “We didn’t have it at the house, but I lived many places before Bright Moon.”

“…Right.” Glimmer is eyeing her curiously. “Well, go change, I guess. Bow will be up here eventually.” Adora gathers the clothes in her arms and heads down the hallway outside the bedroom.

She changes quickly. Her dress is a bit difficult to get off; she hasn’t had to be coordinated in a hundred years, and clothes from her first life are absurdly complicated. She’s pleased by how simple they seem to be now—the shirt slips right on over her head, and the pants are fastened with a drawstring. She looks at herself in the long mirror hanging from the door for awhile, tugging at the clothes.

She doesn’t… _not_ like them. They’re foreign, of course, but they’re soft, and both are loose enough that they don’t make her feel uncomfortably revealed. But they’re undeniably mens’ clothes, and they masculinize her appearance in a way that she wasn’t prepared for. Her shoulders are broader than she remembers them, her hips narrower. If it wasn’t for her chest, she could almost pass for a man, but more important than that, she’s…recognizable. Adora feels a _connection_ to the image in the mirror that she’s never encountered before in her life.

Adora isn’t sure how to describe the feeling.

She pushes the strange thoughts away and leaves the bathroom, turning the little switches on the wall to shut off the lights as she does so. She carries her dress in her hands, unsure what to do with it. She wore it for a hundred years, and she has no desire to put it back on, but just leaving it on the floor of the bathroom would be rude.

“Hey,” Glimmer says as Adora reenters the bedroom. She’s still alone but for Adora in the room. Bow hasn’t returned from his conversation with his fathers yet. “Everything fit okay?”

“Yes,” Adora says. “I…have questions.”

“Shoot.” Glimmer sits down on the end of the bed, which makes Adora pause for a moment. It’s a very familiar gesture, just sitting on Bow’s bed without him even in the room. She wonders again about the nature of Glimmer and Bow’s relationship—but that isn’t the line of questioning she had intended to go after tonight.

“These are mens’ clothes,” Adora says, gesturing at herself as she sits down in the chair by Bow’s desk. “Is it…normal for women to wear mens’ clothes?”

“I mean, kind of?” Glimmer says. “It depends on where you are in the world. Some places are more conservative and don’t really like it. But here it’s pretty normal. No one is gonna think you’re weird or anything.” Adora digests that. She could keep dressing like this if she wanted to. That prospect almost sounds more daunting than climbing back into her dress, or whatever passes for modest women’s clothing in the twenty-first century. “You can wear whatever you want, Adora,” Glimmer says. There’s a firmness to her voice that Adora hasn’t heard from her in the past few hours, a _certainty_ that’s somewhat reassuring. “No one is going to be scandalized, and nobody is going to judge you.” Adora nods. She doesn’t know that she can quite believe that, at least not yet, but it’s good to hear it, all the same.

“And your hair,” Adora says. “It’s—well, it’s pink.” Glimmer snorts.

“It is,” she agrees. “I dye it.”

“I assumed,” Adora says. “I didn’t figure they had invented a new natural hair color while I was—gone.” Glimmer half-smiles politely. Adora is a little disappointed that she didn’t laugh, but the comment wouldn’t have been that funny in any decade. She can’t blame this one on the time difference. “But it’s short,” Adora says, getting back to the point at hand. “Like a man’s.”

“Sort of,” Glimmer says. She rubs the side of her head in a gesture that seems more subconscious than anything. “I mean, this exact haircut is sort of androgynous. Men and women have it. But it’s short, yeah.” She gives Adora a piercing look. “You wanna know if short hair on women is normal?” Adora nods. She’s rather transparent, apparently. “Again, it depends on where you are,” Glimmer says. “It isn’t, like, controversial here. If you want a haircut, you can get one.” Adora nods, files that information away, and decides not to think about it again for a long while.

“Hey.” The voice comes from the doorway, and Adora looks over to find Bow standing there, looking at them both with a tired smile. “Everything going good in here?”

“Yep,” Glimmer says, standing up off the bed. “I stole some of your clothes for her.” Bow glances at Adora, who shifts in place uncomfortably.

“Cool,” Bow says, apparently completely unbothered by this turn of events. “We’ll have to buy you your own stuff soon. You can borrow until then.” Adora nods, then remembers that she’s still holding her old dress in her hands.

“What should I…” She holds it up uncertainly. Bow shrugs.

“Hang it up, I guess?” he says. “If you want to keep it.” Adora’s not sure if she does or not. But she supposes she can always get rid of it later if she makes up her mind, so she quickly grabs a hanger from the closet and puts it up. It looks _bizarre_ hanging there next to a long row of Bow’s button-up shirts, which look almost familiar to Adora. It seems that mens’ clothing hasn’t changed nearly as dramatically in the past hundred years as women’s has; the shirts look tighter, the fabrics are different, and the patterns and colors are much more varied and extravagant, but they’re of a design that Adora recognizes from her first life: collars, buttons, and long sleeves.

“I think I’m gonna head home,” Glimmer says as Adora turns away from the closet. “We’ve still got _school_ tomorrow.” Bow groans quietly at the reminder.

“Right,” he says. “One of my dads can probably drive you. I need to sleep, too.” Glimmer nods. She glances between Bow and Adora, looking a little uncertain of what to say.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she says to Bow. “Adora…you too, probably, right?” Adora shrugs. She has no idea what happens next. She isn’t exactly in control of anything at the moment. “Right,” Glimmer says. “Okay. Good night.” She slips out of the room, closing the door behind her.

“Do you need anything?” Bow says, turning to Adora. “Food? Water?”

“Glimmer gave me some water,” Adora says. “I think I’m alright. I…” She tries to think of a way to communicate that she doesn’t really _know_ what her body needs anymore, but she comes up blank.

“Okay,” Bow says. “Well, my dads are fine with you staying here, for as long as you need to. I told them the truth. I don’t…think they necessarily _believed_ me, but they definitely believe you need help. So…”

“That’s very kind of them,” Adora says. “I’ll have to thank them somehow. And thank you, too, for…” She gestures vaguely at her body. She isn’t sure of what to say. She’s never had to thank a complete stranger for resurrecting her before. Especially not when she’s planning on asking them to do it again for someone else.

“Yeah,” Bow says quietly. “No problem. Listen, my dads can take you shopping tomorrow, alright? So we can get you your own clothes. And I’m gonna make a list at some point of documentaries and stuff so we can get you caught up on…y’know, history. Everything that’s happened since you died.” Adora flinches at the word. She doesn’t like it, though that’s second to the fact that it isn’t wholly accurate.

“Documentaries?” she repeats instead, focusing on the unfamiliar word instead of the painful one.

“Yeah,” Bow says. “They’re movies that…” He pauses. “You’ve probably never seen a movie, huh?” Adora doesn’t know that one, either. She stays silent. Bow sighs. “Alright. Look, let’s worry about it tomorrow, okay? I’m really tired.”

“Of course,” Adora says. She isn’t sure what time it is, but Bow looks exhausted. “I think I may be tired, too.” Bow doesn’t bother questioning the phrasing. He turns on the electric lamp on the bedside table and steps over to the switch by the door to shut off the main light in the room. Adora sits down on the floor and crawls awkwardly into the sleeping bag. Bow disappears down the hallway for a few minutes, and when he returns, he’s wearing a pair of shorts and an undershirt that seems to be missing its sleeves, and also its bottom half. Adora averts her eyes automatically, a creeping heat spreading into her face. Glimmer had made it clear that the world has changed a _lot_ in its sense of modesty, but Adora can’t exactly make herself stop noticing. It’s _strange_ to her that anyone would feel so comfortable with others seeing their bodies.

“Bow?” Adora says as Bow climbs into bed. She’s doing her best to leave her questions for the morning, but this one can’t wait. She _can’t_ sleep until she knows what they’re planning to do about Catra. “Would you be…I’m sorry to ask this of you, but would you be willing to go back to the house and try to revive Catra? She’s my—my friend, from before, and she’s in the same state I was.”

“Of course,” Bow says, propping himself up on his elbows to look down towards the floor, where Adora is lying. “We aren’t gonna abandon her there.” Adora nods.

“I know Shadow Weaver appeared tonight,” she says, “and that that’s why we left without her. But—“

“Adora,” Bow interrupts. “We didn’t leave her there because of Shadow Weaver. I mean, we did, but we tried to revive her first. Before we tried you.” Adora blinks at him, a cold pit forming in her stomach. “It didn’t work on her. That’s part of why we were so surprised when it worked on you. I mean, other than the whole returning from the dead thing.”

“It didn’t work?” Adora echoes. “But—Catra and I—the same thing happened to both of us. We were in the same spirit form. We—“

“I don’t know why,” Bow whispers. “But we’ll try again, okay? I promise.”

“…Alright.” Adora lies all the way down on the floor, the fear in her stomach no less potent for Bow’s words. “We’ll try again.”

“Good night, Adora,” Bow says from up on his bed. He flicks off the lamp, and darkness fills the room.

“Good night, Bow,” Adora says. Above her, Bow rolls over, and within minutes, his breathing evens out. Adora stays awake on the floor for a long time, thinking of Catra, alone in that house with that monster and waiting for Adora to return.

* * *

The next morning, while Bow is at school, George and Lance take Adora to a place called _the mall_. Adora finds it positively overwhelming. There are giant, moving staircases, flashing lights, more of those _screen_ things, though these are the size of a horse, and _people_. So many people, absolutely everywhere.

Bright Moon had been a small town when Adora first lived. A few hundred people, a seamstress, a shoemaker, a general store. Whatever it is now, it’s unrecognizable. Adora stays close to Bow’s fathers, too afraid of getting lost to wander off on her own, though George and Lance practically encourage it. They take her to clothing store after clothing store, displaying a sheer variety of options that Adora can’t comprehend. She’s never had this kind of _choice_ before. Ms. Weaver had bought or had Catra make all of Adora’s clothes herself, and before that, there was even less freedom. Adora only owned two dresses before she was taken in by Ms. Weaver.

“You know, you can shop in the men’s section if you want,” Lance says after awhile, smiling kindly at Adora as she shirks back from yet another display of pink t-shirts and tight jeans.

“It’s all just so…” Adora shakes her head. She hadn’t realized she was being so transparent with the few glances she had taken towards the men’s section, which seems to stocked with clothes that actually _fit_ their mannequins. “People actually wear these?” she asks, gesturing at the female mannequin in front of her and looking over at Lance. He smiles, clearly amused by her confusion.

“People do,” he says. “But you don’t have to.” Adora nods. She looks over at the men’s section once again, spotting more of the loose kind of pants she’s currently wearing—she’s still in her pajamas from the night before, and a pair of Bow’s shoes which are much too big for her—and button-up shirts.

“Okay,” she decides, and steps to the left, into the racks of men’s clothing. She half expects a store worker to come over to her and direct her back into the women’s section, but nobody seems to be paying her any attention at all. George and Lance follow her, but neither of them offer comments as she examines a shelf with the kind of pants she’s wearing. The sign above them says _fleece joggers_ , which means next to nothing to Adora, but does, at least, let her know what to call what she’s already wearing.

Adora feels a strange sense of reluctance as she reaches for the clothes. She has to force herself to cross the last few inches of space and actually touch them, like she’s trying to push two magnets together. It’s not quite _fear_ , but picking them up as a serious consideration, as something she might actually _want_ , feels like a statement.

“Do you want to try those on?” Lance says from behind her. Adora turns around and nods seriously.

“I would,” she says. “Maybe several colors. I…like them.” _That_ is much more of a declaration than just picking up the pants, but still, neither of Bow’s fathers comment on it. George just starts flagging down an employee to get Adora a fitting room.

The pants all fit. Adora buys her own grey pair, a black one, and a dark green one, though the price tags make her positively nauseous until George quietly explains the concept of inflation to her. She gets some of the men’s shirts, too; long-sleeved, button-up ones made of thick flannel with a plaid pattern. It makes an odd picture in the changing room mirror, and Adora stares at herself for a long while, that same feeling from the night before bubbling up in her throat.

George and Lance take her to a shoe store next. Here, at least, Adora doesn’t mind the women’s section. She gets a pair of simple, red shoes that Lance calls _sneakers_. They’re infinitely more comfortable than Adora’s old ones, or Bow’s, and she wears them out of the store with a little bit of a smile on her face. Whatever the feeling in her chest is, she likes it.

“Are you hungry?” George asks as they ride one of the escalators down to the first floor of the mall. Adora is fascinated by the machine; she’d love to learn how it works. An endless, revolving staircase seems like something out of a children’s book to her. She wonders if she can get Bow to put a _movie_ about escalators on his list.

“I am,” Adora says. She isn’t actually quite sure, but she hadn’t eaten that morning or the night before, or any time in the past one hundred years. Whether she knows how it feels or not, her body must be begging her for food.

“What kind of pizza do you like?” George asks.

“Pizza?” George stares at her blankly.

“You’re serious,” he says. Adora nods. George lets out a long, slow sigh.

“You know you don’t have to lie to us for us to help you,” he says. His tone is firm, and Adora flinches a bit. That tone had never led anywhere good with Ms. Weaver, or anyone else who had cared for Adora before that.

“George,” Lance says. “I don’t think she’s lying.”

“Are you joking?” George says. They’re off the escalator now, and Adora is trailing behind the two of them as they walk towards an area of the mall floor covered in tables and chairs. “You’re going to believe she’s a resurrected ghost from the 19th century?”

“20th,” Lance says. “And I don’t believe that. But I believe she believes it.” George sighs again and glances back at Adora. She stays silent and wonders if she’s about to end up on the streets for the third time in her life. She likely wouldn’t survive this time, alone in a foreign world. Not unless the streets have gotten much kinder since she was alive.

“Do you eat meat?” George asks Adora.

“…Yes.” _Are there people who don’t?_ Adora has never met any. George nods to himself, mutters “pepperoni” under his breath, and walks away.

“Come on,” Lance says from beside her. He offers Adora a smile and gestures towards an empty table. “Let’s sit down and wait til he comes back.” Adora still isn’t _entirely_ sure that she isn’t going to be kicked out, but she settles down in a chair opposite Lance and folds her hands in her lap. The chair is constructed of a material that she’s been informed is called _plastic_ , and absolutely everything seems to be made of it these days.

“I’m not lying,” Adora says quietly after they settle into their seats. “I understand why you believe that. It’s a fantastic story. But I’m not lying.”

“I know,” Lance says. “Honestly, Adora, it would take a really, really good actor to seem half as confused as you do by…well, everything. I believe you’ve never seen a phone before, or an escalator, and that you grew up with an old-fashioned sense of modesty. I just…don’t know if I can make the leap from noticing all of that, and believing it, to believing in ghosts and magic and resurrection.” Adora nods slowly. She can’t fault him for that. She wouldn’t believe a word of it, either, if she hadn’t lived and—not-lived through it.

“So what do you believe?” she asks. “What do you think happened to me?” Lance shrugs.

“Something that hurt you,” he says. “That much is obvious. I don’t need to understand what, exactly, happened. I want to help regardless.”

“You’ve barely known me twelve hours,” Adora says. “Why would you…” But then again, Lance had raised Bow, and Bow had pulled Adora out of limbo without a clue as to who she is or an ulterior motive.

“I hope you two are hungry,” a voice says from behind them. Adora glances over her shoulder and finds George, returning from wherever he had disappeared to with three paper plates in his hands. He sets two of them in front of Lance and Adora respectively, then settles into his own chair between the two of them with his own plate in front of them.

“Thank you,” Adora says before she looks down at her food. It isn’t anything she’s seen before, but it smells _delicious_. George hadn’t brought any utensils with him, and Adora glances up at her companions to find them picking the thing up by the crust at the back. Adora follows suit and takes a hesitant bite.

“Oh my _God_ ,” she says. She has to set the pizza back down and lean back in her chair as she chews, eyes drifting half-shut. George and Lance are both grinning at her in amusement. “I love your time,” she decides when she manages to open her eyes again. “I cannot _believe_ I could’ve died without ever eating this.” Both George and Lance laugh at that, though there’s a note of discomfort in both of their voices that reminds Adora that they don’t quite believe her when she calls this _their time_. She’s alright with that, honestly. Seeing how the world looks now, with people wearing what they want and marrying whoever they like, Adora has no desire to attach herself to the time she grew up in. She likes this time. She’d like it to be hers, as well.

Even as she thinks that, she thinks about Catra. Catra would like it out here, too. She would love it the way Adora is already beginning to.

Adora has to find a way to get her out of that house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter spans abt sixteen hours of time, from adora being a ghost to beginning to experience a gender identity crisis. she's goin through it. she will continue to go through it.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan, and on twitter @sevens_evan. speaking of twitter, i popped up in a she-ra fic rec study thing? i didn't know spop twitter liked me why aren't you guys following me on there smh. i know i never tweet but i am actually on there and paying attention.
> 
> please leave a comment on this if you enjoyed it! i know it's a long chapter and a lot to take in, but it'd mean a lot to hear from you guys. next chapter is gonna be catra's pov :)))))


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a short one, but i really like it! it's our first foray into catra's pov, and probably the least depressing catra pov chapter in this fic, lmao.
> 
> before we start, though, i do want to address a few comments from last chapter. some (cis) people expressed that they didn't like that adora was feeling confused about her gender because of her new clothes and the new options available to her for her gender presentation, to which i say: you are very stupid. no, presentation does not equal gender, but presentation is very important to a lot of trans people, myself included. if other trans people take issue with how i'm writing adora's gender journey, i would like to hear their feedback, but any more stupid comments about "actually cis women can be masculine" ( _i know that i'm not a fucking idiot_ ) are going to get deleted.
> 
> anyways! i really appreciate y'all reading and i hope you enjoy the chapter <3

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

Catra closes her eyes. It barely does a thing, of course; meaningless shapes and colors float before her no matter what her eyelids are doing. Whatever allows her to see in this form is unbothered by whether or not she _wants_ to see. But closing her eyes obscures the shape of the inside of the closet, and of Catra’s knees, drawn up against her chin, distorting the world even further than it normally is.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

Those _fucking_ footsteps. Catra is sure Shadow Weaver only makes them to scare her. It used to be that half the time she didn’t make a sound, but ever since Adora left, she stomps around the house so loud that Catra could swear the floors shake. The footsteps always bothered Catra more than they did Adora. Before, when the sounds got to Catra, she would come to this closet, curl up on the floor until Adora found a chance to come be with her, wrap around Catra’s back and hold her close, pressing that strange, watery sensation of spirits touching into every inch of Catra’s body until the fear went away.

“ _Catra_.” It’s Shadow Weaver, from outside, and Catra opens her eyes. Adora is gone now, has been for God knows how long, and this closet isn’t safe anymore.

Catra gets to her feet and steps backwards into the wall. Moments later, Shadow Weaver opens the closet door. She looks around the inside of the closet and, upon finding nothing, her mouth twists into a snarl. Catra wants to laugh at the expression. In life, Ms. Weaver had been impenetrably stoic. Catra can’t think of a single time she showed genuine emotion in the nineteen years Catra lived with her. Only mocking imitations of feeling meant to manipulate. It’s funny, and a little horrifying, to see her with such a clear expression.

The demons didn’t have to change much about Ms. Weaver to make her what she is now, but they changed the shape of her anger, from oppressively cold to burning hot.

“ _I know you’re here_ ,” Shadow Weaver says. She turns away from the closet, leaving the door open, and starts off down the hallway. _Thump. Thump. Thump._

Catra sticks her tongue out at her back and whispers, so quietly that only she can hear it, “Don’t know _where_ , bitch.” If Adora was here, she would’ve laughed at that.

Catra shakes her head angrily. Adora _isn’t_ here. She left. She let the same two _strangers_ that had ripped open this closet—and somehow broken the magic that had kept it hidden from Shadow Weaver for years—drag her back into her body, and then she _ran away_ with them. She left to live a _life_ , and abandoned Catra to the fate they were supposed to share. And worst of all—because Catra would’ve _understood_ Adora leaving; she could never abandon Adora, but she would understand the other way around—Adora had promised to come back.

Catra doesn’t know how many days, weeks, months it’s been now, but Adora has never come back.

Catra slips back out of the wall and onto the stairs. She’s done spending time in that closet, no matter how many good memories it holds—the only good memories she’s made since the day she died.

* * *

_“I wish I could be warm,” Catra whispers. She’s on the floor of the closet again, her back pressed against Adora’s chest, their arms and legs tangled tight. Shadow Weaver can’t find them in here. She never has. Something about the closet hides them, keeps them safe, though they’ve never tried to stay in here too long, not wanting to risk somehow breaking the protection the space offers them._

_They’re so close, so_ incredibly _close, and yet Catra is still shivering. From fear, mostly, but it would still feel so_ good _to be warm right now. In life, Adora’s body had run like a furnace. Just sitting close to her would warm Catra up. In not-quite-death, or wherever they are now, all Catra can feel is a vague rustling sensation against her back. They had never been this close in life, and Catra_ hates _that they’ll never get to be. She deserves to hold Adora for real._

_“So do I,” Adora whispers back, reminding Catra that she had spoken. A slight pressure appears at the back of Catra’s head, and Catra can picture Adora behind her, pressing her forehead into Catra’s hair. “We should have done this before.” Catra’s grip on Adora’s hand at her stomach tightens as she hears her own thoughts spoken aloud. It’s always like this in the closet. They dance around the edges of the things they almost did in life, the feelings in Catra’s chest that she’s_ sure _are mirrored in Adora’s._

_“We should have.” Catra turns over in Adora’s arms to look her in the eye—or rather, to try to. Her vision shifts and dances, and Adora is a half-there form anyway, smears of color and movement. Catra can’t find the blue of her eyes, or hear the details of her voice beyond just barely making out the words she says. “But perhaps I would’ve been too warm.” Adora laughs. The sound is distant and indistinct. It makes Catra_ hurt _._

_“Wouldn’t that be a wonderful problem to have?” Adora says._

_“It would,” Catra whispers, then, before her nerves can fail her, “Any problem you cause would be a wonderful one to have.” Adora goes quiet, and Catra can picture the look on her face: wide, unblinking eyes, a slightly open mouth. It’s a dumbstruck look, the same one Catra saw every morning when Adora broke her wrist several months ago—several months before they…went away, that is; Catra has no idea how long it’s been since that horrible night—and Catra had to help her dress. The way they’d touched then had been so hesitant, so fleeting and gentle and scared. Catra wants to go back and scream at herself for_ wasting _so much time._

_“Catra,” Adora says, and Catra can almost pretend she sounds as she once did._

_“Please tell me you feel the same,” Catra whispers. She’s sure Adora does. She has been for a long time, since Adora jumped in front of her and saved her from hell, sent them both to this halfway state that they’re trapped in now. But knowing it and asking to hear it are two very different things._

_“I do,” Adora says. She shifts, and Catra feels the indistinct pressure of Adora’s hand at her back leave, quickly replacing itself at her cheek. Adora is touching her face. “I always have. I’m fairly certain I’m in love with you.” Catra lets out a breathe she doesn’t need. Spirit or not, never-ending cold be damned, the warmth those words spark in her chest is undeniable._

_“I love you,” Catra whispers back, and wishes desperately that she could see Adora smile. Above them, a_ thump-thump-thump _echoes through the floor._

* * *

Catra brushes the memory away. She climbs the stairs quickly and silently. Shadow Weaver may not be looking at the moment, but she doesn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. It doesn’t really _matter_ if Shadow Weaver finds her, of course; she can’t kill Catra. Not any more than she already has. It’s just deeply, deeply unpleasant to be caught.

Although…that had always been true because of Adora. Adora had maintained the force that was keeping them both from being consumed, from vanishing entirely. And now Adora is gone.

Catra shivers slightly and hurries down the upstairs hallway. She doesn’t go into the room with their bodies—just hers and Ms. Weaver’s, now, since Adora had reclaimed her own. Catra never goes in there, if she can help it. She heads down to the very end of the hallway instead, follows the sharp turn to the right, and ends up at a very familiar, open door. She takes a deep, unneeded breath, wishes she could still feel the air in her chest, and steps through the doorway.

The room is small, barely larger than the closet under the stairs. A bed is pressed up against the only window, and aged clothes hang from wooden hangers on a pole installed between the walls, without a closet around them. It’s undecorated but for a candle on the bedside table, half-burnt with a puddle of wax at its base.

It’s Catra’s room. _Was_ Catra’s room, once upon a time. She can’t stay here long; Shadow Weaver will come looking in Catra’s usual hideouts soon, and this is one of them. She returns here often so that she can look out the window.

Her window is level with the lightly sloped roof outside of it. In life, she had taken a lot of pleasure from being able to open it in the summer months to let the cool night air in. Waking up to the occasional insect or very lost bird was more than worth it to lower the temperature of the bedroom, considering how hot it got inside the house during the day.

Catra had also often crawled out the window. Sitting on the roof provided a wonderful view of Bright Moon below the hill, the forest that sprawled out around it, and, in the distance, the lake several miles out of town. Catra had never been, but on the hottest days, she had always thought about swimming there. She hates water, and probably never actually _would_ , but it was the principle of the thing, really. The thought of being free enough to wander miles and miles just to cool off.

Catra doesn’t know if Ms. Weaver even knew that her window opened. She certainly wouldn’t have approved of Catra’s habit of crawling out onto the roof—or, in the months leading up to their deaths, the company Catra kept out there.

* * *

_“That’s Orion’s belt,” Adora says, pointing up at the sky. “See those three stars there?” Catra makes a humming noise. She sees a lot of stars everywhere; she has no idea which three specifically Adora is trying to point out. “He was a Greek hero,” Adora says, lowering her arm. “He was the only man to ever be loved by Artemis. Her brother, Apollo, grew horribly jealous, and sent a monster to kill him.” Catra wrinkles her nose._

_“The Greeks liked marrying their sisters, didn’t they,” she comments. Adora laughs, and the sound sparks an incredible feeling in Catra’s chest. She draws her knees up and wraps her arms around them, trying to hold the feeling inside._

_“They did,” Adora says. “Or their gods did. But Apollo didn’t marry Artemis. She was a maiden forever.”_

_“Sounds nice.”_

_“You don’t want to get married?” Adora says. Catra shrugs._

_“It’s less about the marriage and more about the_ man _,” she says. Adora goes quiet, and Catra’s heart starts to pound. This isn’t the sort of thing she goes around telling people—or_ would _go around telling people, if she spoke to anyone other than Adora or Ms. Weaver. It’s…Catra can’t exactly call it sinful, since she doesn’t believe in God, but it’s something she keeps a secret for a reason._

_“I can understand that,” Adora finally says. Catra glances over at her and finds Adora looking at her with wide, thoughtful eyes._

_“Can you?” Catra asks. Slowly, Adora nods._

_“Quite well, I think.” She says the words with a_ weight _to them, and Catra turns to face forwards again, burying the lower half of her face in her knees to hide her smile._

_“Show me Orion again,” Catra says. “I didn’t see it the first time.” Adora nods and points into the sky again._

_“Those three stars,” she says. Catra squints, really trying to see this time, but she can’t figure out what Adora is gesturing at. She lowers her arms from around her legs and scoots over to sit closer to Adora._

_“Oh, I see,” Catra says, tipping her head until it’s hovering just barely above Adora’s shoulder, looking straight up her arm. Catra_ does _see, now; it’s a diagonal line of three stars. Now that she knows where to look, the shape is fairly distinct from the rest of the stars around it._

_“I’m glad.” Adora lowers her arm, and Catra straightens her neck, and suddenly, they’re sitting side-by-side. Their bodies aren’t quite touching, but Catra can feel the warmth coming off of Adora._

_“Do you know any other stories?” Catra asks._

_“About Orion?”_

_“About any of them.” Catra gestures vaguely at the stars. She wonders what they look like to Adora. A sky full of patterns, shapes,_ people _; a map of legend and history, instead of the collage of random, meaningless points of light that Catra sees._

_“I know lots,” Adora says. “Where should I start?”_

_“Wherever you like.” Catra just wants to listen to Adora’s voice._

* * *

Catra reaches out and presses her hand against the window. It doesn’t phase through. She’s done this hundreds of times over the years; she can never slip through. The magic that binds her to the house is unbreakable. Unless she walks out in her body, she’s never leaving.

In the distance, Catra can see smears of light where the town once was. When they had first started appearing, not too long after she was torn from her body, she had thought the town was on fire. But the lights have stayed. With her vision in this form, she can’t tell what they are, or even if they’re really there—though if they’re an illusion, they’re the longest-lasting one she’s encountered.

_Thump. Thump. Thump._

The footsteps are at the doorway. Catra spins, ready to run back down the hall or phase through a wall, to do _anything_ to escape.

“ _Catra_.” It’s too late.

“Bitch,” Catra says. Shadow Weaver growls at her, a low, animalistic sound in her throat.

“ _You really should stop running_.” Catra opens her mouth to respond—

—and the room fills with red lightning.

It lances across the walls, finding Catra in a millisecond. Catra freezes in place and howls as it floods through her. Of all the sensations that could’ve stayed the same between life and death, _this_ is the one that was preserved. Ms. Weaver’s favorite way to punish Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s preferred form of torture.

The pain cuts out, and Catra collapses to the floor, catching herself on her hands and knees.

“ _Already_?” Shadow Weaver sounds delighted. “ _It usually takes a few seconds before you start crying._ ” Catra gasps for breath. She has no idea if Shadow Weaver is telling the truth. If Catra is crying, she can’t feel it over the horrible, burning itch in her bones. “ _Answer when you’re spoken to, Catra,_ ” Shadow Weaver says, and the room lights up again. Catra screams so hard it feels like something in her throat tears.

It had never been this bad when Ms. Weaver was alive. She had mastered the lightning when Catra was ten, and used it often, but she just didn’t have the kind of power the demons have. Shadow Weaver, though, has all of her living self’s sadism, and all the force of hell behind her.

Shadow Weaver keeps the lightning going for a long time. Catra’s arms and legs give out, and by the time it’s over, she’s lying on her stomach, unable to move, face half-phased into the floor.

“ _Hm._ ” Shadow Weaver steps into the room, walking around Catra’s prone form. Catra lifts her head enough to watch the movement as Shadow Weaver steps over to the window, looking out towards Bright Moon. “ _You get less entertaining by the day. Adora was much more interesting to play with._ ” Catra grits her teeth and says nothing. Talking back is satisfying, but she _hurts_ right now, and her spirit form can hurt a lot more before it gets overwhelmed and temporarily dematerializes—which is an experience that Catra isn’t eager to repeat, even if it means a few hours without having to _think_.

“ _Although_ ,” Shadow Weaver is saying, turning back around. Catra manages to flip over and sit up, glaring up at Shadow Weaver from the floor. “ _Perhaps, with Adora gone, I can finally collect what is mine_.” A chill runs down Catra’s spine. Those words make her think of that horrible night, ages and ages ago, Ms. Weaver’s hands lashing out and a voice that wasn’t quite hers screaming _give her to me_.

“I am not yours to take,” Catra says. It’s a mistake. Shadow Weaver’s eyes flash red, and the lightning fills the room again. Catra keens, spine bending backwards and hands twitching against the floor. The pain goes on and on this time, until Catra is silent but for quiet gasps.

“ _Stupid child_ ,” Shadow Weaver says. “ _You know you are marked. You always have been._ ”

“What are you talking about?” Catra demands, fighting the shiver in her spine. Shadow Weaver _laughs_ , a horrible sound, like fingernails scraping down a chalkboard but twice as painful.

“ _What, did you think I adopted you because I needed someone to do my laundry_?” she says. “ _If that was all, I would’ve chosen someone_ competent _. No, Catra, I needed a sacrifice_.”

“You can’t have me,” Catra whispers.

“ _You_ belong _to me_ ,” Shadow Weaver says. “ _Demons are very picky about their dinners. I needed an infant, marked from the moment of its birth with its destiny._ ” Catra shakes her head rapidly. She has a feeling where this is going, and it fills her veins with dread. “ _I took you from your mother with a purpose, Catra_ ,” Shadow Weaver says. “ _I marked you_ minutes _after you were born. The only reason I have allowed you to keep your miserable life is so that you can give it up_.” _That’s_ why none of the strangers who have come into the house—nearly all of which Shadow Weaver consumed—have made her stronger. Shadow Weaver doesn’t just need a sacrifice.

Shadow Weaver needs _her_.

“No.” Catra shakes her head again. “I’m _mine_. You can’t have me.”

“ _Do you think I am giving you a choice_?” Shadow Weaver says. She reaches out again, and this time, instead of lightning, darkness crackles at her fingertips. Catra recognizes it, fears it, tries to scrabble backwards across the floor. But her limbs are too tired and pained to function, and she’s barely sat up by the time the darkness is rushing at her face.

“No!” Catra throws her arms up and closes her eyes. “You can’t have me!”

The room goes still and silent.

Slowly, Catra lowers her arms and opens her eyes. Shadow Weaver is gone, as is that creeping darkness that tried to drag Catra to hell. The room is still flooded with light—but this time, it’s coming from _Catra’s_ fingertips.

Catra looks at her hands. White light is dancing across them— _familiar_ white light. But it’s never come from Catra before.

She presses her hands to her face and finds that they’re _warm_.

Miles away, down the hill, in a modest house in a nice neighborhood of Bright Moon, Bow wakes up to a light in his room. He sits up and looks down at the floor to find Adora, still asleep, _glowing_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did say that this was going to be the least depressing catra pov chapter in this fic, and i am pretty sure that that's true. so. this should give you a good idea of what the tone of the rest of this fic is going to be :)
> 
> anyways! i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan and on twitter @sevens_evan if you wanna keep up with me. i'm trying to use twitter more because apparently people on there do actually read my fics. i would love to talk to y'all, so feel free to shoot me an ask or message me on twitter or whatever if you wanna talk!
> 
> please leave a comment if you enjoyed the chapter!! it means the world to me <33


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and welcome to the bowadora brotp chapter. i am very fond of this chapter, and i love bow and adora very very much. i hope y'all also enjoy it. it isn't angsty, and nothing spooky happens; it's all about the interpersonal relationships and the gender identity crises. go wild.

“Bow!” Adora is there to greet him the minute he walks into the living room of his house with Glimmer in tow. She’s smiling up at him with wide eyes. “This last documentary you showed me,” she says, grabbing the DVD case from the couch beside her and holding it up. Bow recognizes it as the documentary about the moon landing he had borrowed from the high school library for her. “You promise it’s true?”

Bow smiles. He’s used to this reaction, at this point. He’s come home from school every day for the past two weeks to find Adora on the couch, glued to the television as she tries to catch up on a hundred years’ worth of history—at least, he has since he got Adora used to the idea of televisions. They had freaked her out at first, which he can’t exactly blame her for. He hasn’t started trying to ease her into using the internet herself yet, but he can only imagine how that will go. Still, Adora _wants_ to learn. He’s yet to talk to her about anything she missed and find her anything but intensely focused on understanding.

“It’s true,” he says, slipping his backpack off and setting it on one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “We went to the moon.”

“ _Amazing_ ,” Adora breathes. “And there are telescopes floating out in space? Looking at the stars? Taking _photographs_?”

“Yep.” Behind him, Glimmer sets her own things down and wanders off into the kitchen, apparently content to leave the nerds alone.

“Can you google them for me?” Adora asks. She stumbles a little over the word _google_. “Can I see the pictures?”

“Absolutely,” Bow says. He sits down on the floor in front of the couch, leaning his back against it. “We can look at all the star photos you want in a bit. But first I…have something I want to talk to you about.” Adora nods, her excited smile fading. Bow has noticed that she does that, sometimes: she disappears into herself, closing off and shutting down mid-conversation. He isn’t sure why.

“Are we getting into it?” Glimmer asks. She’s wandering into the living room from the kitchen, a glass of water in her hand.

“Yeah,” Bow says. Glimmer settles onto the couch, at the other end from Adora so she can pull her legs up beside her and face both Bow and Adora comfortably. Bow takes a deep breath, starts to wonder how he can phrase this in a way that doesn’t sound absolutely insane, then remembers that he’s talking to the ex-ghost he resurrected two weeks ago and that his whole _life_ is absolutely insane now.

“So, I woke up last night,” he says, “and you were glowing.” Adora blinks at him.

“Glowing,” she repeats. Bow nods. “What color?”

“Uh…white?” He shrugs. “It was just light.” Adora nods. “You don’t look surprised.”

“I’m not,” she says. “It shouldn’t be happening right now, but it…isn’t new.”

“You glow a lot?” Glimmer asks. Adora sighs heavily and crosses her arms, like she’s trying to hold herself.

“It’s a long story,” she says. “I don’t know how much of it you know already.”

“Uh, I know nothing about why you glow in your sleep,” Bow says.

“No.” Adora shakes her head. “I meant my past. My—life. Before.”

“Oh.” Bow glances at Glimmer, wondering if she knows what’s going on, but she looks just as confused as he feels. “We don’t know much. You lived with someone named Ms. Weaver. She was kind of a hermit. No one around town back then saw you much, but people thought she was strange. And then one night neighbors reported weird lights and sounds from your house, and you disappeared. That’s it.”

“I suppose I’ll start at the beginning, then,” Adora says. She takes a deep breath. “I was taken in by Ms. Weaver when I was seventeen. My life before that wasn’t…it isn’t important. Ms. Weaver came to the workhouse I was in at the time and picked me out of a crowd. At the time I had no idea why. I thought she was very kind. She wasn’t.

“Ms. Weaver brought me back here to the house. She had a servant, a girl around my age. I didn’t actually meet her until I’d been at the house almost a week. Ms. Weaver liked her to be silent and invisible wherever possible. That’s Catra, of course. We were…” Adora shakes her head, an expression on her face that Bow can’t discern the meaning of. “She was very dear to me,” Adora says, and her tone makes Bow start to _wonder_. “We were—are good friends. We were a comfort to each other. Catra had been with Ms. Weaver nearly her whole life, and she was far better at surviving in that house than I was.

“I learned quickly after I moved in that Ms. Weaver was obsessed with magic. She was quite good at it, too. She could move objects around, conjure illusions, summon lightning at her fingertips. And she was fascinated by demons.

“Catra snuck into her room one day and read some of her notes. She learned that Ms. Weaver had taken me in because she sensed something in me. She believed I possessed some kind of great power, and she was trying to draw it out. I would wake up exhausted sometimes, and Catra would tell me that Ms. Weaver had been in my room at night, chanting.”

“That’s horrible,” Glimmer whispers. Adora blinks, looking at her like she’s just remembered she has an audience.

“It got worse,” Adora says. “It—well, it went on for months like that. I can’t repeat every strange or awful thing that happened. But one night, Ms. Weaver went too far. Catra and I were in her room, and we heard screaming from down the hall. We went to look, and found Ms. Weaver bleeding from her eyes and mouth, crouched on the floor over her symbols and calling out the names of demons. She was trying to summon dozens of them at once.

“We… _I_ wanted to help her. Catra held me back, and the demons took Ms. Weaver’s body. She got to her feet and reached for us. The demons demanded a sacrifice. They had to be paid for their appearance. They— _she_ reached for Catra. There was this—this _darkness_ , pouring from her hands, and I knew that, if it touched Catra, it would hurt her. So I got in front of her, and I stopped it.”

“ _Stopped_ it?” Bow says. His heart is racing sympathetically. “ _How_?” Adora shrugs.

“I couldn’t let them take her,” she says. “I held up my hands, and I felt… _something_ in my chest. This white light came out of them, and it pushed back against the darkness. Everything got bright and dark at once, and then my body fell to the floor without me.”

“So did the light kill you?” Glimmer says. “Or the demons? I’m confused.” Bow is confused by a lot more in that story than the minutiae of what, exactly, killed Adora, but he lets Glimmer ask the questions.

“I didn’t die,” Adora says. “The dead don’t come back to life like…” She gestures at herself. “This.” _That implies the dead come back some other way_ , Bow thinks, then tries to forget he ever thought about. “I think my own magic tore our souls from our bodies,” Adora says. “I don’t know how, or why. I’m not…in charge of it. I’ve used it often since that night. Shadow Weaver has never stopped trying to take Catra, and I always stopped her. It only comes out when I need it, and it’s unpredictable. But I believe it is my magic that sealed us all in that house. None of us could leave, and no animals ever tried to come in. Shadow Weaver wouldn’t have wanted that. The demons want to destroy _everything_ , and there’s very little they can do as a ghost in an empty house. It must’ve been my powers that trapped us, to keep the rest of the world safe.”

“Then why would it let you get resurrected, and not Catra?” Bow asks. He’s trying to think about this logically. He has no idea if logic applies to magic.

“I don’t know,” Adora says.

“And why would you glow at night?” Glimmer says. “Has that happened before?”

“I don’t know if it has happened before,” Adora says. “But I have a theory.” Bow nods, gesturing for her to continue. “Catra has always been the key to my abilities. I’ve been having nightmares about her in that house, running from Shadow Weaver. I assumed they were just dreams. But if my powers are activating while I sleep…I think I may be helping her still. I don’t know how, but I believe—I _know_ that there is something linking us together. Her soul is connected to mine, and the magic is a part of my soul, so…”

“You think your magic is triggering itself, like, subconsciously and helping protect Catra all the way across town in the—the spirit realm or whatever?” Glimmer says. She sounds skeptical.

“I have no idea, honestly,” Adora says. “It’s my best guess.”

“And either way, we still need to go back for Catra,” Bow says.

“We do,” Adora says. She sounds almost relieved. “I know it’s quite a lot to ask of you two, but—“

“We’re gonna save her, Adora,” Glimmer says, cutting Adora off. “We’ll figure it out.” She pauses. “If you were having _nightmares_ about this, why haven’t we been trying to figure out how to save her, like, this whole time? Since the minute you got home?” Bow blinks a little at his house being called Adora’s _home_. The notion doesn’t bother him—he’s starting to kind of enjoy Adora’s presence on his bedroom floor—but it’s the first time any of them have spoken about the situation that way.

“I knew Catra could keep herself safe, at least for a little while,” Adora says. “I’m of little use to her if I run in and die trying to help. Besides, as I said, it is a lot to ask, and I—I thought I might do it alone. This isn’t your problem.”

“Hey,” Bow says. “I promised you, didn’t I? The first night, I promised you we would go back for her.”

“You did,” Adora says. “I think one of your eyes was already asleep when you said it, though.” Glimmer snorts.

“I still meant it,” Bow says firmly. He holds Adora’s gaze until she nods, smiling weakly at him. “If we’re working off the assumption that Adora’s magic is defending Catra for now, we don’t have too much of a time limit. We should prepare as much as we can before we try again.”

“I agree,” Adora says. “Shadow Weaver seems to avoid you two when you’re in the house, but if I’m there as well, I’m certain that won’t stay true. She’s…always been obsessed with me.”

“Can she actually hurt us?” Glimmer asks. “I mean, she’s scary, but she’s a ghost, right? Can she even touch us?” Adora’s expression darkens.

“She can,” she says. “You aren’t the first people to come into the house since we were trapped there.” She doesn’t elaborate. Bow shivers slightly, remembering the grotesque glimpse he’d gotten of Shadow Weaver, that first night they’d gone exploring, and the long list of disappearances linked to the house over the decades. He had wondered if they had all died in there. He has his answer now. “We’ll need a way to defend ourselves,” Adora says. “Or, at the least, buy time to get Catra out.”

“What about your magic?” Bow says, refocusing. “Couldn’t you just zap her?” Adora is already shaking her head well before Bow finishes speaking.

“I can’t make it work on command,” she says. “I have no idea if it will appear when we need it to.” She frowns deeply. “You both must have some sort of affinity for magic,” she says. Bow blinks. If he does, it’s news to him. “You made the spell that brought me back work. That takes power.” Bow glances at Glimmer, expecting her to look lost and dumbfounded, like him.

“…Yeah,” Glimmer says. She looks more embarrassed than anything. “Well, about that. Uh…”

“Glimmer?” Bow says, confused. She glances at him, wincing slightly.

“If one of us has magic, it’s probably me,” she says. “My dad is, uh, kind of a sorcerer?”

“Glimmer, what the _fuck_ are you talking about.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Glimmer says, turning to fully face Bow. “It’s just, y’know, not the kind of thing I’m supposed to go around telling people.”

“No,” Bow says. “Back up. _Micah_ is a _sorcerer_? What does that even _mean_?”

“Well, he does spells on the houseplants, mostly,” Glimmer says. “Making them grow faster or bloom out of season. But I think there are spells on the house, too? When we remodeled the bathroom sophomore year, I saw a bunch of weird symbols painted inside the walls.” Absolutely none of this information is helping Bow process what he’s just learned.

“Your dad is _magic_ ,” he says. “How long has your dad been magic?” Glimmer shrugs.

“His whole life?” she says. “I don’t know. We don’t really talk about it much.”

“You don’t talk about it much,” Bow repeats. “You just casually know that your dad has magic powers, and you don’t talk to him about, and you haven’t told _me_ about it.” Bow is realizing that he’s actually a little upset, and it’s starting to slip into his voice. Glimmer winces at his tone.

“Can we talk about this later?” she says quietly, shooting a pointed glance at Adora, who is watching them both with wide eyes.

“Sure,” Bow says. He takes a deep breath, trying to refocus. Micah is magic, and he’ll sort _that_ out later, but right now, while they’re all here, they should plan.

“So, if I’ve got magic,” Glimmer says, “then I’ll be the one doing the protecting? Or will I be doing the resurrection spell?”

“I’ll cast the resurrection,” Adora says. Her tone is final. Even Glimmer nods and accepts the decision without protest.

“Okay,” Glimmer says. “I’ll ask my dad about…anti-demon spells, I guess.”

“If I may,” Adora says. “I don’t know your father, but if he’s at all knowledgeable about magic, he won’t want his daughter fighting demons and raising the dead.” Bow can’t help but smile at the deadpan way she delivers the words, though she doesn’t seem to be joking.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Glimmer says, deflating slightly. “Plus, he’ll tell my mom, and she _definitely_ won’t like it.” She rubs at her temples, and Bow recognizes the gesture. Glimmer _hates_ this kind of stuff: logistical, repetitive planning. She’s great at big ideas and bold moves, but this stuff stresses her out. The way she’s touching her head is the same posture she adopts during group projects at school. “Okay, so,” Glimmer says, “I guess I’ll try to find information online, instead? Bow, you should send me links to some of those supernatural forums you’re on.” Bow nods. “I’ll still talk to my dad, though. Maybe he can teach me the basics.”

“Okay,” Bow says. “So is that the plan? You learn some magic and then we try again?” Glimmer nods.

Adora makes an intense face, like she’s considering her words carefully, and then she says, “Cool.” Bow blinks at her.

“…What?” The word sounds strange in her voice. Adora speaks so formally all the time; hearing modern slang from her is…disorienting.

“Did I use that correctly?” Adora asks, glancing between Glimmer and Bow. Bow can’t imagine their reactions are reassuring; they both look more confused than anything.

“You did,” Glimmer says after a moment. “That’s right. But…why?” Adora shrugs.

“It isn’t 1910 anymore,” she says. “I live here now. I should learn how to speak like you.” Bow doesn’t quite know what to make of that, but Adora sounds determined, so he doesn’t argue.

“I think I’m gonna head home,” Glimmer says, standing up off the couch. “Homework and such. Asking my dad to teach me magic. You guys know how it is.” She looks down at Bow. “Could I talk to you really quick, though? Maybe out front?” Bow nods, and Glimmer gives Adora a parting smile before she heads over the table, grabs her things, and leaves the room, headed down the stairs to the entryway. Bow looks up towards Adora on the couch.

“You good?” he asks. She looks deathly serious again, like she had for the first few days after he brought her home. She’s lightened up some since then—most days Bow comes home to an excited barrage of questions about whatever documentaries she watched that day—but it seems like their planning has brought her down again. She’s drawing into herself.

“I’m fine,” Adora says. Bow isn’t about to let the look on her face slide, though. He holds her gaze firmly until she sighs and relents. “Glimmer made a good point,” she says. “I left Catra in that house alone. I’ve had nightmares most every night since then. And I—I didn’t try to go back. I’ve been watching movies and trying foods and having _fun_ while she’s fighting for her life.” It takes Bow a moment to recognize the emotion in Adora’s voice as _guilt_.

“Hey,” Bow says. He hops up off the floor to sit on the couch beside her, reaching out to set a hand on her shoulder. He keeps the touch slow and hesitant. Lance had tried to hug Adora one morning and almost made her cry—and now, Bow understands why she’s so averse to touch. “You don’t have to feel bad about it, alright? It’s like you said, if you went in there and died it wouldn’t help Catra at all. And you’re alive again after a hundred years. You’re allowed to have a little fun.”

“It’s selfish,” Adora says quietly. “To be happy without her.”

“Maybe,” Bow says. “But you’re allowed that. You don’t have to be selfless all the time.” Adora just shakes her head. Bow sighs, files this under _issues to work through later_ , and lets his hand drop from Adora’s shoulder.

“I need to go talk to Glimmer,” he says. “I’ll be back in a bit, alright?” Adora nods, and reluctantly, Bow leaves the room.

* * *

Glimmer is sitting on the front porch bench swing when Bow steps out of his house. She looks up at him as he closes the door and gives him a brief, nervous smile. Bow settles onto the bench beside her and looks over at her.

“So,” he says. “Your dad is magic.”

“Yeah.” Glimmer sighs. “I am sorry I didn’t tell you, Bow.” Bow tries to revive his earlier frustration with her and finds that it has already evaporated. It’s a beautiful day out, sunny and warm despite the fact that it’s inching ever closer to Thanksgiving, and Glimmer looks beautiful in the sunlight.

One of these days, Bow’s hopeless crush on his best friend is going to cause some actual problems. But for now, it just makes it really easy for him to forgive her.

“I understand,” Bow says. “I mean, I don’t, at all. I’m still kind of freaking out here. But I get why you didn’t tell me. _My dad does magic_ isn’t the kind of thing you want getting around.”

“Exactly.” Glimmer looks relieved. “I know you wouldn’t tell anyone, and I trust you. It just…never really seemed relevant until now. And my mom would’ve killed me.”

“Yeah.” Bow gets that. Magic was not a _thing_ in his life until they walked into a haunted house. That makes a thought occur to him, and his eyes narrow. “Wait a minute, you _knew_ magic was real and you still led me into the house? _Knowing_ it could have ghosts in it?”

“I didn’t know that,” Glimmer protests. “I knew about _magic_ , not _ghosts_! My dad casts spells to keep bouquets from wilting! Demons and ghosts and raising the dead are all pretty far removed from that! And it isn’t—like, my dad has _always_ been magic, and it’s _normal_ , for me. I’ve never seen a fucking demon before, Bow.”

“That’s—“ Bow pauses. “—a fair point, actually. But still, you were really freaked out by the idea of ghosts after the first night we saw Catra.”

“I’m still freaked out,” Glimmer says, shaking her head.

“Really?” Bow stopped being disturbed pretty quick after he managed to fully accept the existence of ghosts into his worldview. Ghosts are real, he’s performed a kind of not-technically-necromancy, a girl who was born in the Victorian era sleeps on his bedroom floor. He’s embraced the lunacy.

“There’s a dead girl sitting on your couch, Bow.”

“Well, she’s not dead anymore,” Bow says. “She’s all, y’know, corporeal.” Glimmer shakes her head.

“It’s nuts,” she says, and Bow can’t argue with that. “What’s weird is how… _normal_ she is,” Glimmer continues after a moment. “Like, she talks weird, and dresses like a douchey middle school boy now, but she’s just kind of a regular person. Who glows, apparently.”

“As opposed to what else?” Bow asks. Glimmer shrugs.

“She was born a hundred years ago,” she says. “Shouldn’t she be, like, super racist and sexist and homophobic and stuff?” Bow pauses. It’s a thought he’s had, too, especially having her live in his house with his _very_ —by the standards of Adora’s time—unconventional family.

“I dunno,” he says. “I guess good people have always been around.”

“I guess.” Glimmer pulls her legs up, setting her feet on the edge of the bench and propping her chin against her knees. “It’s just weird to think about.”

“Yeah.” Bow doesn’t really share Glimmer’s confusion. He wonders how he’s somehow coping with this whole thing better than the girl who’s apparently known magic is real her whole life. “I’ve been wondering if I should come out to her,” he says after a moment, looking forwards and up the sunlit driveway. He feels Glimmer’s eyes on him from the side.

“Yeah?” she says quietly—not pushing, just gently curious. Bow shrugs.

“I mean, she sleeps on my floor,” he says. “At some point she’s gonna see my scars.” His hand comes up to his chest automatically, rubbing at the incision lines beneath his shirt. They’re still bright pink—he’d had top surgery this past summer—and very visible when his shirt is off, or even through a thinner white tee.

“It’s not like she’ll know what they are,” Glimmer points out.

“Yeah.” Bow drops his hand back to his lap, and suddenly, it’s wrapped up in Glimmer’s. He glances down at their joined hands, up Glimmer’s arm towards her face, but she’s the one looking away this time. “I just don’t want to freak her out,” he says, looking back down at their hands. “I don’t wanna mess anything up.”

“You’re not messing anything up,” Glimmer says. “If she’s weird about it, that’s on her.”

“I mean—“ Bow shouldn’t be saying this, shouldn’t be defending the _possibility_ of Adora reacting poorly, but he can’t stop himself. “—not really? She’s from 1910.”

“Yeah, and she’s accepted the _internet_ ,” Glimmer points out. “That’s way fucking weirder from her perspective. If she can handle that, she should be able to handle trans people.”

“Maybe.” Bow isn’t fully convinced.

“Besides, she’s all about wearing whatever she wants, now.” Glimmer finally looks over at him, their hands still clasped together in Bow’s lap. “When I went shopping with her, literally the _only_ thing she set foot in the women’s section for was sports bras.” Bow nods. Glimmer makes a good point. Adora hangs out around the house in joggers, flannel shirts, and the occasional hoodie. She clearly isn’t attached to a rigid interpretation of gender roles.

“I’ll think about telling her,” Bow says softly.

“Hey.” Glimmer squeezes his hand, getting his attention. “Only if you want to, right?” Bow nods. Glimmer gives him a smile, and Bow’s heart trembles in his chest.

“You’re—“ He clears his throat. “You look really nice today. Pretty.” His voice cracks halfway through the sentence, and it makes him cringe internally. Glimmer blinks at him.

“…Thanks,” she says, sounding a little confused.

“I just thought I should tell you.”

“Okay.” Glimmer is starting to look amused now, and Bow decides to quit while he’s ahead.

“I should probably go back inside,” he says instead of stumbling through another half-baked compliment. “Homework, you know. Plus Adora wants to look at star photos.”

“Right.” Glimmer takes her hand back, and Bow curls his fingers into a loose fist, like he can hold onto the ghost sensation of her hand in his. “And I should go talk magic with my dad. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Sounds good.” Glimmer gets to her feet, gathering her backpack and giving him one last smile before she descends the front porch steps. “Walk safe!” Bow shouts after her. Glimmer just waves over her shoulder and walks up the driveway, pink hair shining bright in the afternoon sun. Bow watches her go until she disappears down the road, his hand still curled into a loose fist in his lap, holding onto Glimmer-shaped air.

* * *

“Hey,” Bow says as he reenters the living room. Adora hasn’t moved from the couch while he’s been gone; she’s flipping through channels on the TV with a bored expression. Bow had been hesitant about teaching her to use the actual broadcast TV capabilities and not just the Netflix queue—God knows what kind of stuff she could find; televangelists or biased news programs or something else he really doesn’t want a girl from the 1910s who knows _nothing_ about the modern world getting into—but Adora had actually figured it out on her own. Apparently, she had started pressing buttons on the remote one day while home alone, and had eventually worked out the concept of channels for herself.

“Do you wanna go look at those star photos now?” Bow asks, pausing by the kitchen table. Adora turns the TV off and sits forward on the couch, a thoughtful expression on her face.

“Actually, I wanted to ask you something,” she says. Bow blinks.

“Okay,” he says. Adora nods, staying silent for a long while, like she’s building herself up to something.

“I would like to cut my hair,” she says.

“Alright,” Bow says. “I can take you to a salon or something? They might not have space today, but—“

“No,” Adora interrupts. “I—mean something…drastic.”

“…Okay.” Bow doesn’t really know where Adora is going with this. Adora doesn’t seem to, either, as she opens and closes her mouth several times, as if searching for the right words.

“Glimmer’s hair is nice,” she says eventually, and a few things finally click in Bow’s head. The way he’s noticed Adora checking her reflection in mirrors, dark screens, even in the microwave door. Turning this way and that, adjusting the way her shirts fall on her shoulders and chest. He had assumed it was just her getting used to her new clothes, to the new _world_ , but…it’s a familiar behavior. It’s one he’s engaged in himself. And now the look on her face as she talks about a _drastic_ haircut: furrowed brow and clenched jaw, like she’s confused and upset and anticipatory all at once.

Bow files his observations away in his mind and decides not to conclude anything just yet.

“Do you want it as short as hers?” Bow asks. “You can do that, if you want.” Adora chews her lip and touches her hair, which is currently up in a ponytail with an odd little poof forming just above her forehead.

“I don’t think so,” she says, then—“I don’t know.” Bow thinks about it for a moment, then takes out his phone. He has Pinterest downloaded, for some godforsaken reason, and he opens it as he sits down the couch beside her. He opens the search tab, types in _androgynous hair_ , then goes back and changes it to _androgynous long hair_ before he hits the search button.

“How about you look at some of these photos?” Bow asks, handing the phone over to Adora. She takes it gingerly, cradling it with one hand and carefully scrolling on the screen with her other index finger. She’s still a little freaked out by touch screens, and she has a long way to go before she masters scrolling or typing with her thumbs yet.

Adora scrolls in silence for awhile. Bow spaces out a little bit, staring at the blank TV screen. He’s tired—Adora waking him up by _glowing_ on his floor had definitely impacted his sleep schedule—and he doesn’t feel like getting up and getting his backpack, even though he could definitely be working on homework while Adora scrolls.

“Here,” Adora says suddenly, holding Bow’s phone out. He takes it, glances down at the screen, and finds that Adora has tapped on a photo of a person with long hair and an undercut.

“This is what you want?” he asks. Adora nods. She looks a little nervous. Bow thinks he might know the feeling. “You’re in luck,” he says, locking his phone and sliding it back into his pocket. “I own some clippers. I can give you this right now if you want.”

“You know how to cut hair?” Adora sounds skeptical.

“Hey,” Bow says defensively. “I trim Glimmer’s sides for her sometimes. This is basically the same thing.” Adora’s skeptical look doesn’t fade, but she nods in agreement anyway.

“That is what I want,” she says. “Could we…today?”

“Sure.” Bow gets to his feet. “Let me lay down some towels in the bathroom and get you a chair. Put on a shirt you don’t care about getting hair all over, I guess.” Adora nods and stands up. They head off into the hallway. Adora peels off at Bow’s bedroom to change her clothes, and Bow continues down the hall to the bathroom to set up.

It doesn’t take him long to lay down spare towels and set up a folding metal chair. He finds the clippers in the drawer where they always are, and he’s sorting through various guard lengths when Adora appears in the doorway. She’s wearing a t-shirt, one of the few she owns, and she has her arms crossed—a move that Bow has come to associate with nervousness for her.

“Have a seat,” he says, gesturing dramatically at the chair. “Walk-ins are welcome.” Adora does not get the joke—which Bow doesn’t mind, it was weak anyway—and she walks into the room, settling into the chair. Bow hands her yet another towel. “Put this over your front,” he says. “Less hair everywhere that way.” Adora obeys, and soon, she looks almost like she’s waiting for a haircut at a real hair salon. “Can I take your hair tie out?” Bow says, plugging the clippers into the wall and moving to stand behind Adora, making eye contact in the mirror. Adora nods, and Bow moves slowly, telegraphing his touch as much as he can. Adora can get jumpy about physical contact, and he doesn’t want to set her off right now, when she already seems fragile.

“We have to figure out how much hair you want left on top,” Bow says once he has the hair tie out. “Like—“ He touches the side of her head. “Do you want the line here, or—“ He moves his hand up, closer to the crown of her head.

“The first one,” Adora says quietly. She still sounds nervous, and Bow pauses, his fingers still resting on her scalp.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks, as gently as he can. Adora blinks at him in the mirror.

“I think so,” she says. “Is it—should I—am I allowed?” Bow is surprised at the question, though Adora looks even more surprised that she asked it.

“Of course you are,” Bow says. “You can do whatever you want.” Adora shakes her head, and Bow lets his hand fall back to his side.

“That’s never been true before,” she says. “Not about…how I look. Aren’t there _rules_ still? That women should—look a certain way?” Bow reaches over Adora’s shoulder and sets the clippers back on the sink. If he has to explain gender theory to a girl born in the 19th century, this conversation is going to take awhile.

“There are still rules,” Bow says, meeting Adora’s gaze in the mirror. “Lots of people think that women should look one way and men should look another. But it’s just what people think. We made up all the rules, like, as a culture. It isn’t set in stone anywhere that women should have long hair and men should have short hair. We decided that. And if you want to break those rules, you can.”

“I…” Adora looks down at her lap. “I can’t understand that.” Bow exhales slowly, trying to find another way to explain it.

“Imagine you grew up alone,” he says. “Like, totally, completely alone. In the woods or something. You wouldn’t look at your body and call yourself a woman, or look at someone else’s body and call them a man. There would be differences, but you wouldn’t assign them a cultural meaning. You’d just be people who happen to look different.” Adora doesn’t look any less confused. Bow takes a third shot. “People look at bodies, at how someone was born, and say oh, that person should have long hair, and be emotional, and be good with kids, and a lot of other more subtle stuff that’s kind of baked into our culture. People want men and women to look different, act different, talk different, even move different from each other. But there isn’t a real _reason_ for that. If no one ever told them to want that, then they wouldn’t.”

“I…understand, I think,” Adora says quietly. “But I can’t…it doesn’t _fit_ , in my mind.”

“That’s okay.” Bow sets a cautious hand on Adora’s shoulder. She doesn’t reject the contact. “This stuff is confusing for people today to think about. I’m just trying to make the point that you really, really can do whatever you want, and still be a woman. Or not be a woman, if you want.” _That_ gets Adora’s attention. She jerks her head around, looking up at Bow with an utterly perplexed look on her face.

“ _Not_ be a woman?” she says, and Bow really hadn’t planned on getting into _this_ today, but he nods.

“I mean, we invented all of this,” he says, gesturing vaguely. “Like, as a culture, we invented our ideas of gender. And if that’s true, if all the labels we use for ourselves are just words, you can use whatever label makes you happy. No matter how you were born. So you can dress however you want and look however you want and call yourself a woman, or a man, or—there’s a bunch of other words for this stuff, but the point is, you can just do whatever makes you happy.”

“I don’t think I want to be a man,” Adora says.

“Then don’t be.” Bow shrugs. “It’s completely up to you.” Adora nods, brow furrowed thoughtfully.

“Can you cut my hair now?” she says. Bow laughs, because they have drifted quite a bit from the actual _reason_ that Adora is sitting in a chair in the bathroom with a towel over her, and picks up the clippers from the bathroom sink again.

The room is quiet for awhile, but for the buzzing of the clippers. Bow ties up the hair that Adora wants to keep, then sets to work with the clippers, sending long strands of blonde hair cascading to the floor. Each time Bow glances up, he finds Adora looking at herself intently in the mirror, that same confused anticipation on her face. His heart aches for her. He hopes she can figure herself out soon. Not knowing can _hurt_.

“Bow?” Adora asks as Bow switches sides, one side and the back of her head now shaved close to the skin. Bow _hms_ at her, a little distracted trying to make sure the sides of her head are even before he starts buzzing. “Where did you learn all of this?”

“The internet, mostly,” Bow says. “I, uh…” His heart drops anxiously. If he’s going to say it, now’s the time. Adora has absorbed all the stuff he’s tried to explain with an understandable level of confusion, but no anger, no disgust, no rejection. She probably won’t mind _him_. “I was born a girl,” Bow says, because Adora definitely doesn’t know the word _transgender_ , but the simplification burns in his mouth. “It didn’t make me happy. So I transitioned to living as a man about six years ago.” Adora is quiet for a long time. Bow doesn’t dare look up at the mirror to see her expression. He keeps his eyes focused on his work, slowly dragging the clippers up the side of Adora’s head over and over again.

“I didn’t know,” Adora says eventually. “I couldn’t tell. Can you usually tell? With others like you, I mean?” That’s a loaded question, and Bow clenches and unclenches his teeth as he tries to figure out how to answer it.

“Sometimes you can,” he says eventually. “But, I mean, you shouldn’t make assumptions about people based on how they look. Like, no one looks at me and assumes that that’s—how I got here. But they shouldn’t assume that I’m cis—that I was born a guy, either.”

“Huh.” Adora doesn’t sound _upset_ with that directive, but she doesn’t sound fully convinced, either. “All of this is so far removed from anything I—when I was alive, you were born a man or a woman, and you lived and died that way. This is hard for me to understand.”

“I get that.” Bow doesn’t even _start_ the _trans people have always existed_ conversation. He’ll give her a documentary or something. “You don’t have to understand it all right now. Just, um…” He has to ask. He can’t _not_ ask. His heart is still pounding in his chest with anxiety. “You aren’t, like, weirded out or anything, right? By me, I mean?”

“I don’t know what _weirded out_ means,” Adora says, and usually Bow would be amused by that, but right now, he’s really trying to keep his hands from shaking and fucking up Adora’s haircut.

“Like, finding it—me—strange,” he says. “Or…bad.”

“Oh.” Adora thinks about it for a moment, which does absolutely _nothing_ to help Bow’s anxiety, but then she says, “Everything I’ve seen since the moment I woke up has been strange. But I think you’re a very good man, Bow, even if I don’t understand how you became one.” Bow exhales, his heart finally beginning to slow down.

“Thank you,” he says. Adora doesn’t respond, likely doesn’t understand the weight of what’s just happened, and Bow lets it slide. He’s happy to give the gender 101 talk any time, but dipping into his own life is a lot more taxing. “Your hair is done,” Bow says after a moment, pulling the clippers away from Adora’s head and switching them off. He pulls Adora’s hair tie out, as well, releasing her hair from the bun he’d put it in top of her head. It falls a bit awkwardly to her shoulders, looking thin and light with the sides and back cut out. Wordlessly, Bow holds out the hair tie to Adora, who takes it and puts her hair back in a ponytail, leaving that little bump above her forehead again.

“What do you think?” Bow says. Adora stands up, lifting the towel off her front. Bow takes it from her, letting Adora do nothing but look at herself in the mirror. Bow thinks he did a pretty good job; he had been afraid that he had overrated his own haircutting skills, but Adora looks pretty much like she would if she had gotten it cut professionally. As Bow watches, she lifts her hands, rubbing the short hair on the sides of her head with her fingertips.

“I think…I like it,” she says slowly. She turns her head this way and that, trying to get a complete look at the cut. “It’s…strange.”

“Strange good, strange bad?” Bow asks. Adora shrugs.

“I’m not used to seeing myself,” she says, then pauses. “Looking in mirrors, I never…saw _me_ in them. Just some girl. But that’s _me_.” She gestures at her reflection. Bow can’t contain his smile. He _knows_ that feeling.

“Sure is,” he says. “You look awesome.” Adora finally turns around to face him fully, for the first time since she sat down to cut her hair, and she smiles at him. The expression is more confident than Bow has ever seen from her before.

“Thank you,” she says. Bow grins back.

“You’re welcome,” he says. “Can I give you a hug?” Adora considers it for a moment, then opens her arms.

* * *

“Bow?”

Bow blinks his eyes open, surprised by the voice. He rolls onto his side, looking down at Adora on the floor—or rather, where Adora would be if it wasn’t dark in his bedroom.

“Are you asleep?” Adora says.

“Nah.” Bow props himself up on his elbow, just barely able to see the outline of Adora’s sleeping bag on the floor. “What’s up?”

“Are you and Glimmer in love?”

Bow falls off of his elbow.

“Are we _what_?” His voice cracks. “ _No_. Why are you asking that?”

“I’m sorry,” Adora says. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, it’s fine,” Bow says. “I’m not upset, I’m just—I wanna understand why you think that.”

“The way you act around each other,” Adora says. “You…say things without speaking, sometimes.”

“Yeah.” Bow breathes an internal sigh of relief that that’s all it is. He and Glimmer’s closeness can be explained away; he was worried that he had given some sign, somehow, of how he feels—and if Adora had picked up on a sign like that, Glimmer _definitely_ would have. “I mean, we’ve been best friends since we were little kids. We just know each other really well. We don’t always need words.”

“That makes sense.” Adora is quiet for awhile, and Bow almost thinks he’s gotten away scot-free when Adora says, “But you… _look_ at each other.”

“…What?” Bow says. Adora lets out a frustrated sigh.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” she says. “But you _look_ at each other, in a—a _way_. Like you’re precious to one another.”

“Oh.” Bow knows he stares at Glimmer a lot. He can’t help it. But if Adora has noticed his heart eyes…Glimmer might not be too far behind, and _that_ idea is terrifying. “I mean, I…” Bow hesitates. He’s never actually _voiced_ his feelings before, but if he’s going to admit it to anyone, it might as well be Adora. “I’m in love with her,” he says softly. “She doesn’t know.”

“I thought so,” Adora says, sounding a little bit smug that she was right. “Why haven’t you told her?”

“I—I mean, it’s scary,” Bow says. “I don’t want to mess up our friendship. What if she doesn’t feel the same?” Adora snorts.

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.” Bow frowns.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because I’m not fucking blind.” Bow’s jaw drops. He sits bolt upright in bed.

“ _Who taught you to swear_?” Adora bursts into laughter. It’s too loud, running the risk of waking up Bow’s dads down the hall, but she sounds so genuinely _amused_ that Bow can’t bring himself to tell her to quiet down. “Was it Glimmer?” he asks, which only adds to Adora’s laughter. “I _knew_ I should’ve told her not to do that.”

“The workhouses taught me to swear,” Adora says eventually, when she manages to calm down. “Do you think curse words were invented in 2000?” She pauses. “But Glimmer did teach me a bunch of new ones when you were at track practice the other day.”

“Of _course_ she did.” Bow flops back down onto his pillow, shaking his head at his best friend. The room is quiet for a bit, and Bow almost thinks Adora has fallen asleep before she speaks again.

“I really don’t think you have anything to be afraid of,” she says. “Glimmer loves you. It’s clear as day to me.”

“Yeah.” Bow isn’t really agreeing so much as acknowledging that Adora has spoken. He doesn’t believe that, _can’t_ believe that Glimmer would feel the same way. Wouldn’t she tell him?

_Oh_. Bow has an engineer’s brain, logical and rational and very good at math. He recognizes the flaw in that logic immediately. _He_ hasn’t said anything, either.

“Maybe I’ll tell her,” he says, not sure yet if he means it. Then he turns to something that’s been sitting at the back of his mind since earlier that day, when Adora finally opened up about everything that had happened a hundred and ten years ago. “While we’re talking about love,” he says. “What about you and Catra? Was there…something?” Adora goes quiet again, for even longer this time. Bow squints through the darkness, trying to see if she’s sleeping—then a cloud shifts, and moonlight begins to spill into the bedroom, revealing Adora with her hands pressed to her face. “Adora?” Bow sits up, swinging his legs off the bed. “Are you okay?”

“I—“ Adora’s voice cracks, and she shakes her head. She lowers her hands as she sits up, and Bow’s heart drops when he realizes that she’s crying.

“Adora,” Bow says again. He drops off of the bed, sitting on the floor beside her. “Are you—can I—“ He gestures awkwardly with his arms, and Adora nods, leaning into his side. Bow pulls her into a hug immediately, holding her tightly. His shirt above his collarbone immediately grows damp.

Adora cries almost silently. No sobs, no words; she’s barely even breathing. Bow rubs her back as comfortingly as he can and notices that she’s trembling beneath his palm.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers after awhile, when Adora’s shivers have faded slightly. “I shouldn’t have asked. You don’t have to tell me anything—“

“It isn’t your fault,” Adora says. Her voice is surprisingly steady, and she pulls herself out of Bow’s arms to sit up straight, though he keeps a hand pressed against her back, trying to offer as much comfort as he can. “I’m just—I never—I—“

“Adora,” Bow whispers. “Take a breath, okay? With me. Follow my breathing.” Adora nods, and Bow inhales slowly, counting in his head. He hasn’t used breathing exercises on himself in years, but they’re ingrained in his memory, and right now, he’s glad for it.

Bow guides Adora through six or seven slow, measured breathes before she nods and whispers, “Thank you.”

“Of course.” Adora finally sounds calm, so Bow drops his hand from her back. “You don’t have to talk about it, okay? It’s late. I don’t want to upset you.”

“I think I’d like to, actually,” Adora says. “I’ve just never spoken of it to anyone but—but her.”

“Okay,” Bow says. “That’s scary. I get that.” He had his own _oh my God what if I like girls_ crisis right in the middle of his _oh my God what if I’m not a girl_ crisis. He understands.

“It is.” Adora rubs her knees with her palms, silent as she thinks. “We were—we were in love when we were…alive,” she says. “I don’t know when I…I didn’t love her from the start, but I don’t think it took very long.” Bow nods encouragingly, though Adora is looking at the floor in front of her instead of at him. “Neither of us spoke of it. We didn’t know what to _do_ with it. At least, I didn’t. And then we were gone for so long, and after…I don’t know, years, there was no reason _not_ to speak of it anymore. But we couldn’t…things are different, in that form. You can’t see, or hear, or touch like you would in a body.” Adora looks up at Bow with _desperation_ in her eyes. “I finally knew she loved me back, and we were trapped in that house with that monster, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

“You never got your chance,” Bow says. Adora shakes her head. He reaches out, setting his hand over one of the hands she has on her knee. “Listen, Adora, we’re going to get Catra out of there, okay? We’re going to save her, and then you’ll have the rest of your _lives_ to do something about it.” Adora nods slowly.

“We will,” she says, but she doesn’t sound quite convinced.

“Adora,” Bow says. Adora looks up at him, finally making eye contact. Bow squeezes her hand. “We’re going to save her,” he says firmly, and holds Adora’s gaze until she gives him a small nod.

“We are,” she says, and this time, she sounds like she means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bow's discussion about gender identity and labels is very much drawing on my own experiences as a trans person, which i hope means it comes off as authentic and interesting and not just, like, a powerpoint presentation about gender. the nb adora plot point is going to get a lot less attention for awhile as the main plot of the story goes forward, but i'm not dropping it and it is going to get explored further in later chapters.
> 
> there won't be a chapter next week. i'm trying to get a head start on writing the last four chapters of this fic so that i can keep those updates weekly. a lot of the later chapters end on very cruel cliffhangers that i don't want to leave you guys on for an extended period of time, so i figured this was a nice spot to take a break so i can make sure the ending comes out in good time. chapter 6 should be coming in the first week of february.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan and on twitter @sevens_evan if you wanna keep up with me! i'm very active on tumblr and rarely active on twitter, but i'm around on both websites if you wanna talk to me or just wanna hear about it when i post something.
> 
> please leave a comment if you enjoyed this! i love hearing from you guys and it is EXTREMELY motivating to know that there are people reading this every week and enjoying it. thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo! it's been a little bit; i was very productive in my week off and i only have two more chapters of this thing to write. i'm very excited to go through the rest of this story with you guys. i think you'll like it.
> 
> check out [this INCREDIBLE art](https://appsa.tumblr.com/post/641662544538419200/a-few-doodles-based-on-sevens-evans-fic-find-a) @appsa on tumblr did based on this fic. it makes me insane every time i look at it tbh.
> 
> this chapter is kinda the last lighthearted chapter before shit gets wild, so enjoy it, lmao.

“Looks like great work,” Micah says. Glimmer shoots him a grin through the glowing symbol she’s traced in the air before she places her palm against it and _pushes_. The symbol floats forwards and shatters against the rosebush she had aimed it at, exploding into a shower of purple shards before disappearing entirely.

The ends of the bush’s limbs open and bloom into flowers.

“Beautiful,” Micah says approvingly. He turns to smile at Glimmer. She takes a minute to admire her own work before turning to him. “You’re a natural. We can probably move on to a new set of spells tomorrow.”

“Sounds good,” Glimmer says, the buzz of anticipation already sparking in her veins. She’s been practicing with her father for a little over a month now—she and Bow had brought Adora home in late October, just before Halloween, and now it’s December 23rd. In that short span of time, Glimmer has fallen completely and utterly in love with magic. The academic side of it—theory, symbols, dead languages, ancient deities—is boring as can be, and the old books Micah lends her are difficult to read, but a little bit of studying is a small price to pay for how it _feels_ to cast a spell.

Glimmer has never felt so powerful in her life. Her father has only taught her small things: making flowers bloom, heating food, illuminating dark corners. Even with such small spells, she can _feel_ the magic in her veins every time she casts. It’s a hot, intoxicating flood that pours out of her heart and into her fingertips, where she turns it into _action_. Glimmer can’t imagine why she didn’t ask to learn all of this sooner.

Of course, the actual _reason_ she had asked to learn magic, the defensive spells that she needs to learn to get them into the house and buy time in which to bring Catra back, are still far out of her reach.

“Hey, guys!” calls a voice from across the lawn. Glimmer turns, already smiling at the familiar figure of Bow, coming around the corner of Glimmer’s yard and waving at them. It’s a weekend, but he isn’t wearing a crop top for once—a testament to the chill in the air. Glimmer thinks they might even get snow this year, if they’re lucky.

“Hey, Bow,” Micah says as Bow approaches. “Good timing. We just finished up our lesson.” He gives Glimmer a quick side-hug. “I’ll be inside if you guys need anything.”

“Thanks, Micah,” Bow says as he comes to a stop in front of Glimmer. Micah nods at him and walks away, headed back up towards the house.

“Hi,” Glimmer says, smiling up at him as her chest fills with a familiar warmth. She doesn’t bother trying to push it away. She’s in too good of a mood from her magic to bother agonizing over her feelings for her best friend.

“How’d the magic go today?” Bow asks. “Good?”

“Great,” Glimmer says, as she has every time Bow has asked this question since her lessons started.

“Yeah?” Bow says. “You know, I still haven’t seen you actually do a spell.” Glimmer frowns, runs down the spells she knows in her head, and decides on one she knows will be impressive.

Glimmer raises her hands and draws a symbol in the air. Purple light comes from her fingertips, arranging itself into a glowing glyph. Bow’s jaw drops open, and Glimmer bites her lip to hide her grin at his reaction. She taps the center of the glyph with one finger, and it shatters in the air. As the pieces fall to the ground, a single rose takes shape in her hand—first as a weightless illusion, then, suddenly, with weight and substance of its own.

“Whoa,” Bow says. Glimmer holds out the rose to him, and he takes it, examining it closely.

“That’s conjuring,” Glimmer says. “Making something out of nothing. It’s a lot easier than it sounds.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Bow says, and tucks the stem of the rose into the chest pocket of his jacket, so the flower itself sticks out. He looks far more handsome with it than he has any right to. “You know, your hair is sparkling.” Glimmer raises a hand to her hair automatically, although it doesn’t feel any different beneath her fingertips.

“I know,” Glimmer says. “It’s a side effect of doing magic. It’ll probably be permanent eventually, if I keep at this.”

“Huh.” Bow gets a look in his eye then, a nervous smile forming on his face. “It…looks really pretty. _You_ look really pretty. And, you know, magical.” He has that _look_ in his eye again, nervous hope and something else, something soft and warm. Glimmer recognizes it immediately as the same expression he makes every time he’s done something like this over the past few weeks—complimented her unprompted, taken her hand without a specific reason, sat a little closer to her than he usually would. She’s not an idiot; she recognizes the pattern of behavior, and the emotions behind the expression that comes with it, but…she just can’t let herself believe it. She doesn’t want to risk being wrong.

“I can share,” Glimmer says, instead of responding to Bow’s compliment. She flicks a hand, and Bow’s hair starts to sparkle, just like hers. “Take a look.” Bow pulls his phone out and checks his image in the front camera.

“Huh,” he says. “ _I_ sparkle.” He puts his phone away. “How long does it last?” He sounds sort of amused, but not particularly excited, so Glimmer flicks her hand again and takes the sparkles away.

“There you go,” she says. “Back to normal. Can we go inside? It’s chilly out here.”

“Oh,” Bow says. “Sure.” He probably hadn’t even noticed the temperature; he runs warm, and Glimmer very much does not.

They head into the house quietly, kicking their shoes off in the entryway and heading upstairs to Glimmer’s bedroom. Micah is nowhere in sight; Glimmer imagines he’s likely in the kitchen or his bedroom.

“So why’d you come over?” Glimmer asks as she closes the bedroom door behind them. Bow sits down on the edge of her bed, watching her take her coat off and hang it up.

“To see you, mostly,” he says. “Feels like we don’t get to see each other that much anymore. Just us, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Glimmer sits down beside him, their knees brushing together. He has a point. Glimmer really likes Adora—they get along strangely well for two people with a century-long age gap between them—but she also misses _this_. Her and Bow, goofing off in their bedrooms, without the weight of two strangers’ lives on their shoulders.

“But I, uh…” Bow winces. “I also came to ask about the magic stuff. I found a few more sites that talk about battle magic. Here, I took some notes.” He digs through his coat pockets until he finds a few folded sheets of notebook paper. Glimmer takes them and sets them on her bedside table to deal with later.

“I don’t know how much it’ll help,” she says. “Everything seems to be saying I need a weapon first.” Most of the information Bow has tracked down about battle magic—the kinds of defensive spells Glimmer will need to keep a demon at bay while they resurrect Catra—has talked about the need for a focus: a magical object that takes energy and _sharpens_ it, pushes it to a point, a singular purpose. It can’t be just any object, it has to be something specifically made for that purpose.

Glimmer has no idea where to find anything like that, but she’s guessing they can’t order it off Amazon like the spirit box. Etsy, maybe? There could be a sorcerer out there making custom magical weapons and selling them online. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen in Glimmer’s life lately.

“I know,” Bow says, and sighs deeply. “We can keep looking for a solution to that, but…I don’t know how much longer Adora is going to be willing to wait. She’s…” He shakes his head.

“Agitated,” Glimmer suggests. She knows what Bow is talking about. Adora’s emotional state has been a little unpredictable—well, it has been since the moment they brought her back, but it’s gotten worse in the past week or two. She’ll be hanging out with Glimmer and Bow, having fun, and then suddenly she’ll withdraw into herself, going silent and sullen without warning. She never takes it out on them—that isn’t the kind of person Adora is—but it’s impossible to not notice.

“Yeah, agitated,” Bow says. “She glows pretty much every night. I think things are probably getting harder for Catra in there.”

“And Adora feels guilty about it,” Glimmer says with a nod. Their new friend’s guilt issues are deep enough to drown a moose in. Glimmer has overheard Adora apologizing to George and Lance for living in their house at least three times now.

“Yep.” Bow lies back on Glimmer’s bed with another heavy sigh. Glimmer lies down beside him, and they’re close enough on the mattress that her shoulder is pressed up against his. “I’m worried about her,” he says after a minute. “She’s just—she’s putting a lot of pressure on herself to do this right. Especially since she’s doing the resurrection spell herself. I…really hope it works, I guess.”

“But it might not,” Glimmer says quietly, voicing the thought she’s had since the day they planned their next move out on Bow’s couch. “We tried the resurrection spell on Catra already.”

“I know.” Bow covers his face with his hands. “I don’t know, they’re, like, magically connected somehow, right? She can see Catra in her dreams, and she has her weird glowy powers. Maybe it’ll change something.”

“Maybe.” Glimmer isn’t convinced.

“She’s been doing a lot of research, too,” Bow says. “I swear she’s on the computer every single time I turn around. I never should’ve taught her how to use Google.” Glimmer snorts.

“You think she might find something helpful?” she says. Bow drops his hands back to his sides and rolls his head to look at Glimmer. Glimmer has a little bit of a crisis as she realizes how close together their faces are. If she wanted to, she could lean in and—

“I don’t know,” Bow says, and oh, right, they’re having a serious conversation. Glimmer shouldn’t be thinking about kissing him. “I’m just hoping so. If this doesn’t—if we can’t bring Catra back, I don’t know how Adora will cope. I don’t know if she _will_ cope.”

“Yeah.” Glimmer looks back up at the ceiling, her heart clenching. She really, really hopes this works.

“Sorry,” Bow says after a moment. “I came over because I missed hanging out with you, not because I wanted to talk about all this.” He half-laughs at himself.

“It’s okay,” Glimmer says. “We can still hang out. You want lunch?”

“Um, _yes_ ,” Bow says, sitting up immediately. “I missed your dad’s cooking.”

* * *

“Can you carry the salad, Glimmer?” Angella says as she steps out of the car. Glimmer mumbles some kind of affirmative and pushes open her car door, scooping the salad bowl up in one arm and climbing out.

“Guys!” It’s Bow, shouting from the front porch. Glimmer, Angella, and Micah are all standing in the driveway outside Bow’s house, holding various dishes in their hands. They’re here for Christmas dinner, since they hosted last year and it’s George and Lance’s turn.

This has been a tradition ever since Bow and Glimmer were little. They spent so much time together as young children that their parents practically had no choice but to become friends—luckily, they get along quite well. Glimmer always spends Christmas morning with her family, opening presents and eating breakfast, then either they go to Bow’s house, or Bow’s family comes over to theirs for the afternoon and Christmas dinner.

Angella and Micah have never had to host all of Bow’s siblings at once. It’s usually only one or two—or, this year, zero. Glimmer isn’t totally sure where all of Bow’s siblings are at this year, but it’s just him, his dads, and Adora.

Actually, maybe that’s why Bow’s siblings haven’t come home for the holiday. Glimmer imagines it would be difficult for George and Lance to explain why they’ve informally adopted a legally dead teenager who still shoots awed looks at the microwave.

“Hi, Bow!” Micah calls back as they approach the front porch in a little group. “Merry Christmas!” Bow grins at him, already reaching out to take some of the food off of Angella’s hands as they climb the front porch steps.

“How are you guys?” Bow says as he opens the door, balancing several dishes full of food on one arm and holding the door with the other.

“I’m doing wonderfully, thank you,” Angella says, smiling at Bow and then shooting another, more mischievous smile over her shoulder at Glimmer as she walks through the door. Glimmer rolls her eyes at her mother’s back. The whole _having a crush on her best friend_ thing would be a lot easier if her mom would stop dropping hints that she approves of him.

“My dads are going _nuts_ ,” Bow says as he follows them into the house, closing the door behind him. “I think Lance has been cleaning since six in the morning.”

“It’s just _us_ ,” Glimmer says. “I’m here, like, every day of my life.”

“But it’s an _occasion_ ,” Bow says, in a fairly convincing imitation of his father’s voice. “You have to clean up for _occasions_.” Glimmer rolls her eyes.

“Is that why you’re wearing a real shirt?” she asks, glancing over her shoulder. Bow’s abs are— _unfortunately_ —covered by a dark red sweater, with a white collared shirt beneath it.

“Yep.” Bow sounds a little upset about it. Glimmer isn’t too happy about it, either, though not for reasons that she’s about to tell anybody.

“Glimmer!” It’s Adora’s voice, from the top of the stairs up to the kitchen. Glimmer turns and looks up them with a grin, eyes already finding Adora’s outline against the light from upstairs.

“Hi, Adora,” Glimmer calls back as they start up the stairs, Angella and Micah just in front of them. Adora gets out of the way quickly, taking another dish out of Angella’s arms as she reaches the top of the stairs.

“Thank you,” Angella says, looking a little perplexed. She shoots a look over her shoulder at Glimmer, and Glimmer remembers that she hasn’t actually filled her parents in on the whole _I brought a ghost back from the dead and made friends with her_ thing. At first, she hadn’t bothered because it seemed like more trouble than it would be worth, but now, her father would probably _immediately_ connect the dots to Glimmer’s sudden interest in magic, which would be…a nightmare.

“Hi, everyone,” George says as Glimmer reaches the top of the stairs. He comes out of the kitchen with a smile on his face. “Angella, Micah, has Glimmer told you about Adora?”

“She hasn’t,” Angella says, glancing at Adora and back at Glimmer once more. Glimmer winces slightly, preparing herself for either a poorly prepared lie or, worse, the _truth_.

“Well,” George says. “Adora is a friend of Bow’s who needed some help. She’s staying with us for awhile.” That…is a lot better than Glimmer had been expecting. Her parents can probably tell it isn’t true, since they know all of Bow’s other friends, but they can’t ask about it without making things awkward—and Angella _hates_ complicating social situations.

“How are you doing?” Glimmer asks Adora as she follows her into the kitchen, Bow close behind them both. They put the various dishes Glimmer’s family had brought on the counter and slip out again, staying out of the way of Lance, who is checking between several different pans on the stovetop and an additional one in the oven in rapid succession. He barely glances up to acknowledge their entrance and subsequent exit, as focused as he is on his cooking.

“I’ll help you out, Lance,” Micah says, passing Glimmer in the entrance to the kitchen on his way to the stove.

“I’m doing well,” Adora finally says to Glimmer as they head into the living room, where George and Angella have settled at the kitchen table. “George bought me jeans for Christmas.” Glimmer glances down and realizes that, sure enough, Adora is wearing jeans. Glimmer hadn’t noticed when she arrived because jeans are, like, the most normal possible thing for anyone to wear, but it’s the first time she’s ever seen Adora in them. Before this, Adora has lived in joggers alone—or at least, that’s how it’s seemed to Glimmer. The jeans are unremarkable to Glimmer: dark blue, somewhat loose, a little too long in the leg for Adora.

“He found some company online that makes men’s pants cut for different body types,” Bow says as they settle onto the couch, Adora between the two of them.

“They’re so nice,” Adora says. She’s grinning as she runs her fingers over the denim at her knees. “They’re not tight like all the women’s jeans I’ve seen. Those are…” She shakes her head.

“I don’t mind them,” Glimmer says, feeling a bit like she needs to defend herself against Adora’s old-fashioned sense of modesty.

“I do,” Adora says. “Also, I think I may not be a woman.” Glimmer blinks. She shoots a look at Bow, who appears totally unsurprised by this revelation. Adora must’ve already told him.

“I’m, uh, I’m happy for you,” Glimmer says. She isn’t really sure how to navigate this. Bow is the only person to have ever come out to her as trans, and that had been a lot more… _intense_ than this moment is. Either Adora is already shockingly well-adjusted to her identity already, or she isn’t quite cognizant of the fact that coming out is usually a big deal.

“Thank you,” Adora says, nodding.

“Do you want me to call you something different?” Glimmer asks uncertainly. It seems like the best question to ask. “Like, a different name, or a different pronoun?”

“I like my name,” Adora says, shaking her head. “Bow has told me about the _they_. I’m…not sure I’m ready for that yet.” She tips her head, frowning thoughtfully, then says, “No, just she. For now.”

“Okay.” Glimmer reaches out and takes Adora’s hand briefly to squeeze it. “Thank you for telling me.” She glances at Bow again, wanting some kind of reassurance that she’s handling this correctly, but he doesn’t seem to notice her distress.

“I don’t know if it counts,” Adora says, “if I’m still calling myself the same things. It’s just…” She pauses again. Glimmer waits quietly, trying to give her all the time she needs. “I never liked what being a woman meant, when I was alive.” Glimmer surreptitiously glances over at Angella, making sure she isn’t listening. “And I don’t like it now,” Adora continues. “I—I fit into it more now than I did then, but…even if everything I’m doing, the clothes I’m wearing, fit what a woman is _now_ , it doesn’t fit what _I_ think of as woman. And I think that matters.”

“It does,” Bow says, speaking up for the first time since they got onto this topic. Adora shoots him a smile, and Glimmer is struck suddenly with a little bit of…jealousy. Not of the two of them, because she’s pretty sure that Adora is in love with Catra, but of Adora, for being able to understand this stuff. It’s clear to Glimmer that Bow and Adora have talked about this before, maybe at length, and that they’ve _connected_ on it.

Bow’s trans identity is one of the few things about him that Glimmer can’t understand intuitively. She accepts him, supports him, sees him fully as a man of _course_ , but she can’t _understand_ it. She can’t put herself in his shoes, not completely, and it bothers her. In a stupid, immature, selfish way, it bothers her. And now it bothers her that Adora _does_ understand.

Glimmer pushes the thought away. These are her two best friends in the world, and she is _happy_ for them, damn it. She’s happy that they know themselves and happy that they can understand each other.

_Not everything needs to include me_.

“Let us know if you want to change anything,” Glimmer says out loud, because supporting Adora right now is a lot more important than sorting through her own bullshit. “Your name or pronouns or anything, okay? We can do that, if you ever want.”

“Thank you, Glimmer,” Adora says, smiling at her. “That means a lot.” Glimmer nods, a little uncomfortable with the disparity between her thoughts and the grateful look Adora is giving her.

“Should we play a game or something?” Bow asks, leaning forwards on the couch to look at Glimmer and Adora at the same time. “Dinner’s gonna be awhile. I could get some cards. And, uh…it might be a good excuse to not have Adora talk to your parents, Glimmer.”

“I shouldn’t speak to them?” Adora says. “Why?”

“They’re gonna make small talk,” Glimmer says, picking up on Bow’s anxieties immediately. “And, no offense, but it’s really obvious you…aren’t from around here, sometimes. They’ll ask about school or something and…” She gestures vaguely with her hands, trying to convey _you’ll out yourself as an ex-ghost_.

“Of course,” Adora says, nodding. “I’ll keep quiet.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bow says, standing from the couch. “I’ll go find a game.”

* * *

“That’ll be $400,” Adora says, smirking across the board at Glimmer. She looks _unbearably_ smug.

“How the fuck are you so good at this?” Glimmer says as she digs through her unorganized pile of Monopoly money, trying to scrape up $400 in as many small, annoying bills as she can. “You should _not_ be good at this.”

“Beginner’s luck,” Adora says, still sounding smug.

“Monopoly isn’t about luck,” Glimmer says. She’s starting to get a little worried as she counts her money. “Monopoly is about outlasting everyone else until they quit out of boredom. It’s a game of _spite_ , not skill. And _fuck_ , I think you just bankrupted me.”

“You, too?” Bow says as Glimmer drops her remaining cash—$375—in the center of the game board. “Did Adora just _win_ Monopoly?”

“I did?” Adora’s eyes get wide. “Is that an achievement?”

“I mean, I would say so,” Glimmer says, leaning back on her palms as Bow begins to sort the money back into neat piles. “I don’t think me and Bow have ever even finished a game before.” They’re sitting in the middle of the living room floor. Angella,Micah, Lance, and George are all seated at the kitchen table, waiting for the timer on whatever Lance is baking to finally run out so they can eat. It feels uncannily like a Christmas when she and Bow were little—Glimmer, Bow, and however many of his siblings playing games and killing time, wholly separate from the adult world in their little bubble on the floor. For years now, they’ve sat with their parents and talked instead, but with the help of a few secrets between the three of them, they’ve brought back some of that childhood magic.

Adora fits much better between Glimmer and Bow than any of his siblings ever had, though. Glimmer is finding it a little strange to think back to those memories and _not_ picture Adora sitting beside them at twelve, ten, seven years old. She fits in so well, it almost seems like those memories are missing something, now.

“Did you guys just finish?” Lance asks from behind them. Glimmer glances back and realizes he’s standing just outside the kitchen, now.

“Sure did,” Bow says. “Adora _won_.”

“Just in time,” Lance says. “Dinner’s ready.” Glimmer, Bow, and Adora all climb to their feet, leaving the Monopoly board to be cleaned up later.

Preparing for dinner is a chaotic affair. There’s seven people crowded into Bow’s small kitchen, and half the dishes get carried out to the table while the other half stay on the kitchen counter. Glimmer has to juggle her plate in one hand and her water glass in the other while trying to load her plate with food and leave room for the remaining dishes in the other room, all while squeezing in between various people who are doing the exact same thing. It’s unnecessarily stressful and incredibly comforting. It feels like home.

“So, Adora,” Angella says as they all settle down around the dinner table and start passing the dishes there around. “Do you go to school with Bow and Glimmer?” Glimmer’s heart drops. _Oh, this is so not going to go well_.

“I’m not in school right now, actually,” Adora says. Her voice sounds even, but the brief glance she shoots at Glimmer is panicked.

“Oh.” Angella sounds a little surprised. “Did you already graduate? I assumed you were Bow and Glimmer’s age.”

“I’m nineteen,” Adora says. “I didn’t graduate. It’s complicated.”

“Well, if you can win at Monopoly, I’m sure you’ll do just fine, school or no,” Micah says. Adora gives him a polite smile and nod, and Glimmer breathes a small sigh of relief that her dad is changing the subject. “What do you like to do? Any big hobbies?”

“Not many,” Adora says. “I like…watching documentaries. And learning about the stars.”

“She’s a huge space nerd,” Bow says. “I swear she looks at Hubble photos, like, every single day.”

“They’re pretty,” Adora says.

“Is that what you want to do for a career?” Angella asks. “Something with space?” Adora hesitates, looking a little panicked.

“I haven’t given it much thought,” she says quietly.

“Mom,” Glimmer says, rolling her eyes. “Don’t grill my friends about their job opportunities, jeez.” It’s a little more confrontational than Glimmer probably needs to be, but the statement does its job: Angella’s attention shifts from questioning Adora to frowning at Glimmer.

“I’m making conversation,” she says.

“It’s alright,” Adora says. Both Glimmer and Angella look at her, and Adora pales slightly as she realizes that she’s put herself in the middle of a brewing argument. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do,” Adora says to Angella. “There’s…a lot I need to figure out before I consider my future.” She doesn’t elaborate. Angella seems to finally get the message to not ask further questions, though her eyes narrow slightly in a thoughtful expression that Glimmer is sure means trouble for her.

“This salad is excellent, Micah,” George says, shifting the conversation away from Adora and her life. “What did you put in this dressing?” Micah launches into a list of ingredients and techniques, and Glimmer, Adora, and Bow exchange glances of relief.

The rest of the dinner goes much the same way: Micah or Angella occasionally asks Adora a question, she does her best to deflect, and Bow and Glimmer swoop in to the rescue by changing the subject. It’s a lot more stressful than Glimmer would really like Christmas dinner to be, but it isn’t too bad. Glimmer still leaves the table happy, Bow on one side and Adora on her other.

The three of them head downstairs, to the game room near the entryway, leaving Bow and Glimmer’s parents behind. There’s a ping-pong table that can be converted to a pool table downstairs, and Glimmer is really looking forward to _crushing_ Adora at either game.

“Bathroom,” Bow says as they reach the bottom of the stairs. “Be right back.” He heads off down the hall on the opposite end of the game room, leaving Adora and Glimmer alone.

“May I ask you something?” Adora says the moment Bow is out of sight. Glimmer blinks.

“Uh, sure.”

“Are you in love with Bow?”

Glimmer sits down hard on the couch.

“God fucking _damn_ it,” she says. “I am, aren’t I?” She hasn’t thought of it in those terms before; they feel too _big_ to apply to what Glimmer has been thinking of as a stupid high school crush. She’s seventeen; she isn’t old enough or mature enough to—to—

“I think so,” Adora says. “It seems that way to me, at least.” Glimmer nods. Adora is, technically, a hundred and nineteen years old, and Glimmer is fairly sure that she’s been in love with the same person for most of that span. She probably knows how to recognize the signs.

“Why do you ask?” Glimmer says, looking up at Adora. Adora shrugs.

“It seemed obvious to me,” she says. “But you both dance around it so much, I was curious. I wanted to be sure.”

“We…both do?” Glimmer says. “You think Bow feels the same way?” Adora sighs, sounding _incredibly_ tired.

“I do think that, yes,” she says. “But I take it you won’t tell him just because I think you should.”

“Oh, God no,” Glimmer says. “Absolutely not.” Adora shakes her head.

“It’s up to you,” she says. “But I wish you wouldn’t waste your time. You’ll only get so much of it.” Glimmer looks at her for a long moment.

“You and Catra,” she says. It isn’t a question.

“Me and Catra,” Adora agrees, and the look on her face is _indescribable_. Glimmer doesn’t think she’s ever seen so much pain and loss on _anyone_. “We didn’t get our chance when we were alive. You still have yours. I wish you’d take it.”

“…I’ll think about it.” Glimmer doesn’t really mean it. The idea of _telling_ Bow is just—it isn’t worth the risk of being wrong. Besides, the two of them aren’t being raised by a psychopathic, homicidal demon lady. They’ve got all the time in the world to take their chance. “You and Catra are going to get another chance, though,” Glimmer says, focusing on Adora instead of her own problems. “We’ll get her out of there.”

“Yes,” Adora agrees. “We will.” She sound sure of it, but for some reason, she doesn’t sound quite _happy_ , and Glimmer is about to inquire further when Bow returns to the room.

“Are you two ready to get _demolished_ at ping-pong?” he says. Glimmer stands up off the couch and snorts derisively.

“Oh, please,” she says. “You’re the one going down. C’mon, Adora, you can play whoever wins.”

“We gotta find the paddles first, though,” Bow says. “I’m pretty sure they’re under the table somewhere, but I don’t know.” He squats down, glancing under the table. “Nope,” he says a moment later, straightening up. “Under the couch, maybe?” Glimmer kneels down to look, peering into the darkness beneath the couch. She can’t see a thing, and she’s about to say as much when Adora joins her on the floor. Adora holds out one hand beneath the couch, and it begins to _glow_. White light pours from her fingertips, illuminating the small space beneath the couch—and revealing the location of a mess of ping-pong paddles, although Glimmer is no longer paying any attention to that objective at all.

“You can control it now?” Glimmer says. Adora glances up at her, glances back down at her hand, and her eyes widen like she’s suddenly realized what she’s doing. The light goes out, and Adora grabs the paddles and pulls them out, her eyes dropping away from Glimmer’s.

“I’ve gotten better at it, yes,” Adora says. Her tone is flat, carefully expressionless, a little unnerving.

“Well, that’s awesome,” Glimmer says. “It could be useful when we go get Catra, right?”

“It could.” Adora doesn’t sound happy about the prospect. Glimmer glances up at Bow, eyes wide and begging for a little help with the situation. Bow looks just as surprised at Adora going all glowy while fully conscious as Glimmer feels. He hadn’t known about this development either, apparently.

“Um.” Bow clears his throat awkwardly. “Well, we don’t have to do work talk on Christmas. Or—not work talk, but, like—you know.” This is not the help that Glimmer had wanted. “Let’s just play, huh?”

“Sounds good,” Glimmer says, climbing to her feet. She holds a hand out to help Adora up. Adora takes it, the fingers that had been glowing only moments ago wrapping around Glimmer’s palm.

* * *

“So, you haven’t told us about Adora,” Micah says, glancing up at Glimmer in the rearview mirror. Glimmer avoids eye contact, looking out the car window instead, although there isn’t much to see. It’s almost eleven o’clock at night; it’s pitch black outside. They had stayed at Bow’s, talking and playing stupid party games, until ten-thirty.

“Her situation is complicated,” Glimmer says evasively. “It isn’t my place to tell people about it.”

“You didn’t even tell us you had a new friend,” Angella points out from the passenger seat. Micah hums in agreement.

“She has magic, doesn’t she,” he says. Glimmer’s eyes dart up to the rearview mirror, but he’s looking at the road, now.

“How do you know?” she says.

“I could sense it.” Micah sighs quietly. “She’s— _really_ powerful. Is that why you asked me to teach you? Because you met Adora, and she has it?”

“It’s not that simple,” Glimmer mutters. She crosses her arms, trying to figure out how to explain this. It’s seeming less and less like Glimmer is going to get to keep Adora’s origins—and the _reasons_ Glimmer is learning magic—a secret.

“Where did she even come from?” Angella asks. “I sat through a dinner with her, and I still know nothing about her. Is she from Bright Moon?”

“Yes.” Glimmer sighs. “Look, Adora was… _missing_ for a really long time. It’s complicated, but there’s something after her. Some kind of magical monster. That’s why I wanted to learn magic. To help protect her.” The inside of the car is silent for a long while.

“That would be combat magic, Glimmer,” Micah says eventually. “I haven’t taught you any of that.”

“I know,” Glimmer says. “It’s really annoying.”

“Annoying—“ Angella turns in her seat to frown at Glimmer. “Glimmer, that sort of magic is _dangerous_. And what exactly is this _thing_ that’s after Adora? You shouldn’t be trying to protect her if it puts you in harm’s way.”

“Someone has to,” Glimmer says. “She was in trouble, and she has a friend who’s _still_ in trouble. Nobody else is going to help them.”

“That doesn’t make it your responsibility,” Angella says. “I’m glad that you care, and I’m proud of you for wanting to help, but you can’t just—you have to make safe choices, Glimmer. I don’t like this situation. It sounds dangerous.” Glimmer grits her teeth, lowering her arms so that she can clench her hands into fists.

“Mom, I love you, but I don’t care what you think about this,” she says. “Adora’s my friend. I’m going to help her, whether you like it or not.”

“Glimmer—“  
“Angie,” Micah interrupts. Angella looks over at her husband, though Micah keeps his eyes on the road. “I don’t think you’re going to convince her to stop.”

“You’re not,” Glimmer says.

“And I, for one,” Micah continues, ignoring Glimmer’s interjection, “think she’s making a good choice.”

“…What?” Angella says.

“She’s trying to help her friend.” Micah finally glances away from the road, meeting first Glimmer’s eyes in the rearview mirror, then Angella’s in the passenger seat before he refocuses. “I don’t like that it’s dangerous, either. But it’s noble, and it’s exactly the kind of choice we raised her to make, isn’t it?” The truth of that strikes Glimmer in the chest, and her fists uncurl as her anger dissipates.

“He’s right,” Glimmer says. Angella glances back at her. “You raised me to care about people, and to help them. So I care about Adora, and I’m trying to help her. I’m being as safe as I can—“ _That’s probably not true._ “—but this is the only choice I can make and still be proud of myself, still… _be_ myself.”

“I understand,” Micah says. Angella huffs, but doesn’t respond. “When we get home, I have something to show you.”

“ _Micah_.” Angella sounds _horrified_. “You’re not going to—“

“It’s the best thing I _can_ do,” Micah says. “We’re not going to talk her out of this.” Glimmer really wants to interrupt them—she hates being spoken about as if she isn’t there—but she also doesn’t want to draw her mom’s attention back to her, because Angella looks very, very upset.

“So you’re going to—to sign off on it?” Angella demands.

“I’m going to give my daughter the best shot I can at coming out of _whatever_ she’s doing unscathed,” Micah says. “You can be angry with me for it later. I’m not changing my mind.”

Dead silence fills the car from the moment Micah stops speaking until they pull into their driveway and the porch light comes on.

They unpack quietly. Glimmer helps carry in the empty containers that had held the dishes they brought to Christmas dinner. She avoids her mother’s eyes, though she can feel Angella’s concerned gaze on her back. Once the containers are all stacked on the counter, Micah sets a hand on Glimmer’s shoulder and tilts his head at the staircase.

Glimmer follows her father up the stairs. He leads her to his and Angella’s bedroom, which Glimmer has rarely entered since her phase in preschool where she insisted on sleeping in bed with them both. She does, however, distinctly remember the massive chest at the end of the bed, which she had tried to open as a child several times and always found locked—which Micah is now kneeling down beside. Hesitantly, Glimmer kneels down next to him, looking down at the lid of the chest.

Micah presses his hand against the lock. A small purple glow emanates from his palm, and Glimmer hears a distinct unlatching noise. Micah shifts his hand and lifts the lid.

“Whoa,” Glimmer says. Inside the chest, there’s—well, there’s a lot of stuff. Several tightly stacked towers of books rest at one end, and the edges of the space are lined with objects: little statues, glass bottles with dried plants in them, what Glimmer is pretty sure is a mummified hand. But what draws her attention most is the object, resting in its own lidless box, at the center of the chest.

It’s some sort of staff, with a long purple shaft that leads up to a much lighter purple circle attached to the top, decorated by a golden star emblem. Automatically, Glimmer begins to reach for it. She catches herself, though, and glances up at Micah. He nods, gesturing for her to take it, and Glimmer wraps her hands around the handle.

“ _Oh_.” The moment she touches it, Glimmer’s hands light up purple, and that familiar, burning, powerful sensation of magic floods up from her fingertips into her arms. “What is this thing?” she asks, looking up at her dad.

“That,” Micah says, “is a weapon.” Glimmer tightens her grip on the staff as she realizes what he means.

“A focus?” she asks, rotating the staff in her hands. “For combat magic?”

“Exactly.” Micah stares down at the star emblem, and Glimmer feels the need to hold the staff out to him, let him take it. She tries, but he shakes his head and doesn’t raise his hands to accept it.

“Where’d you get it?” Glimmer asks instead, running her hands over the thing. She can’t tell what it’s made of—it’s too warm to be metal, too perfectly smooth to be wood, too heavy to be some kind of plastic.

“It’s mine,” Micah says. “It _was_ mine. I was interested in that kind of magic when I was a lot younger. It was a gift from the person who was teaching me.”

“Who taught you?” Glimmer asks. “Maybe they can help me.”

“Absolutely not.” Micah’s voice is firm enough that it makes Glimmer jump, and she looks up at him with wide eyes. “She was not a good person, Glimmer. I don’t know if she’s even still alive, but if she is, I don’t want you anywhere near her.”

“Okay,” Glimmer says. “So tell me who to avoid.” She’s fully planning on seeking out whoever he names as soon as possible.

“It’s…” Micah sighs and runs his hands over his hair. “Do you know that abandoned house, out in the hills?” Glimmer’s heart jumps into her throat.

“I’ve heard of it,” she says. “The one that’s, uh, supposedly haunted?”

“That’s the one.” Micah shifts off of his knees and crosses his legs in front of him. He stares into the chest instead of looking at Glimmer. “When I was thirteen, I snuck into the house on a dare from a friend. I didn’t find any ghosts, but I did find an old woman named Ms. Weaver.” Glimmer’s heart _stops_.

“But Ms. Weaver’s dead,” she says, before she can stop herself. Micah’s eyes snap up to look at her.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, and whatever half-lie, half-truth Glimmer had managed to convince her parents of regarding Adora is crumbling into the earth.

“I—it’s—“ She takes a deep breath. “There are—there were—the house is haunted. Like, for real haunted. I’ve been there.”

“When did you go to the house?” Micah asks. “That’s _incredibly_ dangerous, Glimmer. You should’ve—“

“Can I just start at the beginning?” Glimmer says. Micah nods, though he doesn’t look too happy about it. “Bow and I went up there a couple months ago. We were on a dare, too, actually. We saw a ghost, and Bow saw a—“ Glimmer tries to find a concise word for how Shadow Weaver has been described to her and comes up short. “He saw a monster. And he got obsessed with, like, trying to help the ghost, so we went back and—it’s all kind of a long story, but we ended up returning one of the ghosts to its body.”

“That’s Adora,” Micah says, already putting the pieces together. Glimmer nods. “What does this have to do with Ms. Weaver, though?”

“Ms. Weaver was Adora’s…caretaker.” Adora has never used the word _mother_ for Ms. Weaver, and Glimmer isn't about to make that assumption for her. “Back in 1910.”

“…What?” Micah leans back slightly, looking _monumentally_ confused. “Ms. Weaver was a ghost?”

“No,” Glimmer says. “She got…possessed or something. I’m not really clear on how it all works, but she got taken over by demons the night they all died. She’s the monster that Bow saw, Dad. Whatever you met, it wasn’t real.” Micah has gone very, very pale.

“Demons,” he echoes. Glimmer nods. “I knew there was _something_ wrong with her. She tried to make me practice the spells she taught me on…people. Random strangers who didn’t deserve it. That’s when I stopped going to her. I could never do what she wanted me to. But I thought she was just a terrible _person_ , not…”

“She’s why I need to learn that stuff,” Glimmer says. “Adora left a friend behind in that house. We’re going to go back and get her out, too, but I don’t think Shadow Weaver is going to just _let_ us do that again.”

“I don’t think so, either.” Micah rests his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands for a long moment. “If you’re messing with demons,” he finally says, raising his head, “I might not be able to prepare you enough. They’re dangerous, and unpredictable, and once they’ve latched onto a human target, they’re next to impossible to stop.”

“…You sound like you’re speaking from experience.” That garners a small smile from Micah.

“That’s a whole other story,” he says. “Glimmer, I—I have to ask you not to do this. Please.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Glimmer says.

“It could get you _killed_.” Glimmer hasn’t heard anyone say it quite that bluntly before. Her hands tremble around the handle of the staff. It isn’t as though she doesn’t _know_ that, but it’s different to hear it out loud. She isn’t ready to die. She’s seventeen years old. She’s _scared_. She’s…

“I know,” Glimmer whispers. “But I _have_ to. Bow won’t let it go until we at least _try_ , and Adora—“ She shakes her head, remembering Adora’s face in Bow’s house earlier, saying _me and Catra_ and looking like she was _dying_. “It’s more about saving Adora than it is about saving Catra. I don’t think she’ll make it on her own.”

“Alright,” Micah says quietly. “I’ll teach you what I know.” Glimmer blinks. She wasn’t expecting this to be so easy.

“You will?” she says. Micah half-smiles.

“Better than letting you go with nothing,” he says. “I knew you wouldn’t listen to me.” He reaches out, setting a hand on her shoulder. “I hope to God you come back alright,” he says. “Whether you succeed or not. You coming home is more important.” Glimmer nods. There’s a lump forming in her throat, and she swallows hard before she speaks.

“I love you, Dad,” she says. Micah shifts forward on his knees and pulls her into a hug. Glimmer lets go of the staff with one hand and wraps her arm around Micah, burying her face in his chest. She feels like a little kid again, swamped in her father’s arms, small and warm and safe.

“I love you, too, kiddo,” Micah says, and lets go of her. “Now come on. Let’s lie about all of this to your mother.” Glimmer laughs as she stands up, then glances over at the staff in her hand, unsure whether to replace it in the chest. Micah catches her hesitation and says, “Take it. It’s yours now.” Glimmer tightens her grip and nods. She follows Micah out of the bedroom, her new weapon in her hands.

“When can I start learning?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's all for now! i like this chapter; glimmer's pov in this fic is fun and i always like writing her dynamic with her parents. (speaking of which, if you haven't read my glimbow fake dating fic you should check that out! lots of glimmer's family dynamics in that one.) plus another brief look into adora's gender stuff, and the bfs all being friends, which honestly hits different.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan and on twitter @sevens_evan; i'm a lot more active on tumblr but i post my fic updates in both places if you wanna keep up with me. i'll see y'all next week with a chapter that i am very proud of that will probably make you want to murder me.
> 
> please leave a comment if you liked this chapter!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is. well. it's a lot. i did warn you guys in my very first author's note on this fic that it was going to hurt.

“Here you go,” Bow says. He hands Adora a styrofoam cup with steam pouring out from its lid. She wraps her hands around it carefully, her fingers clumsy through her thick gloves, and sighs in contentment when she feels the warmth of the hot chocolate seeping into her hands.

“Thank you,” she says. He just grins at her and hands another drink to Glimmer, keeping the third for himself.

“Thanks,” Glimmer says. She holds the cup close to her face. “God, it’s so fucking cold out here. I hate January.”

“It isn’t half as cold as it used to get,” Adora comments absently. She looks around the park, at the winding concrete paths lit by streetlamps, the memorial benches with plaques that appear periodically next to the paths, the ground covered in fallen and decaying leaves. The trees are bare and skeletal, their branches like claws reaching into the grey sky. Adora can just barely make out a bright spot in west, where the sun is glowing behind thick, opaque clouds.

“Right,” Bow says, drawing Adora’s attention. “You were here before climate change. Or, like, climate change how it is now.”

“Yes.” Adora mostly tries not to think about that. She’d watched a few documentaries on the subject, and they had given her an incredible amount of anxiety. “It snowed, the December I was here in Bright Moon,” she says. “The snow stayed into late February, I think.”

“It still snows sometimes,” Glimmer says. She doesn’t sound pleased by the idea.

“C’mon,” Bow says. “We’ll stay warmer if we keep moving.” He leads them down one of the concrete paths. Adora follows, although she isn’t cold in the slightest; she’s bundled up in the nice coat George and Lance had bought for her, and the jeans she’s wearing—another pair off the website George had found for Adora’s Christmas gift—are lined with flannel.

Adora feels guilty sometimes (often) that George and Lance keep spending their money on her. Clothes, food, water, God knows what else—all for some person they barely know. Adora wishes she could pay them back somehow, but it’s not as though she had any money _before_ , let alone now.

She knows they aren’t upset about it, of course. Just the other day, Adora overheard them talking in the kitchen about papers. Adoption papers, and all the assorted legal issues with taking in someone who was assumed dead a century ago. They want to keep her. More than anything, Adora wants to _stay_.

“Whoa,” Bow says from beside her. Adora pulls back out of her head, and realizes that she’s drank nearly her entire hot chocolate without noticing or really tasting it.

“What?” Adora says, glancing over at Bow. He’s stopped in the middle of the path; Adora has to turn around to face him. He’s holding one gloved hand out in front of him, a look of absolute delight on his face.

“It’s snowing,” he says. Adora frowns, leans forward, and sure enough, finds a few tiny flakes resting in Bow’s palm.

“Is it really?” Glimmer says. She looks up, and Adora mirrors her, staring straight up into the sky.

From far above them, minuscule white flakes are drifting down. They’re barely big enough to be called _snow_ , and they’re melting as soon as they hit the ground, but the sight still brings a smile to Adora’s face, and for a moment, she thinks about the one and only Christmas she spent in Ms. Weaver’s house, all those years ago.

It hadn’t been a good day. It had been long after Ms. Weaver abandoned the illusion of kindness towards Adora, and there had never been any such illusion towards Catra. They spent most of the day trying to stay quiet and out of sight, so as not to make Ms. Weaver angry. But that night, they had snuck out onto the roof outside Catra’s bedroom. That part was just like many other nights, but on that particular night, they had shared a blanket for warmth. With the excuse of keeping her warm, Adora had worked up the courage to hold both of Catra’s hands.

“This is so cool,” Bow says, and Adora pulls herself back out of her memories. “It barely snowed at all last year. Maybe it’ll stick this time.”

“I don’t know,” Glimmer says. “When was the last time we had snow for more than, like, two weeks? Seventh grade, maybe?” She shakes her head. “It’s definitely been awhile.”

“It’s so _pretty_.” Bow sounds awed, and Adora looks up again to find the flakes growing larger by the minute. Maybe Bow is right, and the snow will last awhile.

As Adora watches, Bow opens his mouth, sticking his tongue out. He darts forward a few steps, his hot chocolate waving dangerously in one hand. Adora doesn’t even get the chance to worry that he’ll spill it before Glimmer says, “Bow, what the fuck are you _doing_?”

“Trying to catch one on my tongue,” Bow says. Glimmer makes an exasperated face, but it’s transparent. Adora can see the love that underlies it.

“Whatever,” Glimmer says. “We should find somewhere to sit. I’m sick of walking.”

“You’ll get colder sitting still,” Bow says, finally tilting his head down again.

“We’ll cuddle,” Glimmer says. “You’ll keep me warm.” She turns away and heads over to a nearby trash can to throw her empty hot chocolate cup away. Adora grins at the flustered look on Bow’s face as he stutters aimlessly before giving up on responding altogether.

“How about over there?” Adora says when Glimmer returns, gesturing at a patch of dead leaves on the hillside near the path. They look dryer and less decayed than those around them. “We can lie down and watch the snow.”

“Sounds good,” Bow says, and drains his own hot chocolate before stepping off the path. Adora follows suit, savoring the taste as carefully as she can. She’d had chocolate before… _before_ , of course, but only rarely. It was a scarce treat, not a snack sold in parks. She wants to remember the flavor.

Somehow, on the hillside, Adora ends up between Glimmer and Bow. She doesn’t want to feel like she’s intruding, but neither of them make her feel that way. She gets two arms around her shoulders and a friend against either side. Even through all of their layers of clothing, she can feel Bow and Glimmer’s body heat, and she closes her eyes for a long moment to focus on the feeling.

Everything is cold, as a spirit. Adora hadn’t felt warmth for a century, let alone the warmth of _touch_ , before the night they brought her back. She puts her mind to the task of memorizing the sensation: the heat seeping through her coat sleeves, the quiet rhythm of her friends breathing in and out.

Something cold touches the tip of her nose. Adora opens her eyes, but it’s already gone, the snowflake melting into her skin. Above them, the snow is beginning to fall thick and fast, threatening to bury them beneath its glittering flakes, but Adora can’t be bothered by the thought. She thinks that, between the three of them, their warmth and _life_ could burn away anything cold.

“It’s so pretty,” Bow says again. Glimmer mumbles something in return, echoing Bow’s sentiment. Adora continues to say nothing. She’s caught, now, by the way her breath fogs in the air above her. It reminds her of her old life, of the winter she spent in Bright Moon, and threatens to send her spiraling into the past again, but Adora firmly ignores the urge to indulge in reflection.

She is _here_ , now. In this world, not a past one, with the living, not the dead, and this world is better than the one she left behind. Her breath may freeze the same, but the people are _different_ , are kinder, and she—and she—

“I love you both,” Adora says quietly. On either side of her, Bow and Glimmer shift, their bodies solid against hers.

“Love you, too,” Bow says, and Glimmer repeats his words. Adora can feel their gazes on her face, but she doesn’t speak again.

They hadn’t sounded surprised. Adora likes that. She’s glad that they know. Neither of their lives are lacking for love, and as far as she can tell, they never have been. But Adora figures it can only help to know one more person loves them.

It will certainly help her to know that they love her.

“This Saturday,” Adora says eventually, and she feels both her friends tense—because this Saturday is the day they plan to bring Catra back. “Whatever happens—thank you. Both of you. For giving me another chance at…” She gestures vaguely in the air above them. There’s just too much to say. “Another chance at being alive.”

“Of course,” Bow says after a moment. “We’ve got your back.” Adora nods and closes her eyes again. She burns this moment into her mind: the warmth of her friends’ bodies, the warmth of her friends’ words. Little sparks that she can hold on to. Love is power, she’s learned, and she’ll need all she can get before long.

* * *

The journey up to the house is without incident. They walk in silence, Glimmer in the lead with a flashlight in one hand and her father’s staff in the other; Bow at the back, his backpack full of magic supplies strapped securely onto both shoulders and a flashlight in his hand. Adora walks between them, scanning the ground with her own flashlight and trying desperately to keep her heart from racing. Above them, the house looms, its windows dark and empty, its shadow in the moonlight long and harsh against the hill.

Adora knows that all magic is easier at night, that if she wants this to work—and she _needs_ it to work—this is the best time to do it. But the animal part of her brain looks at the dark and screams _danger_ , and the rest of it fully agrees. So she takes deep, steady breaths the entire walk up to the house, until suddenly they’re on the front porch, and Glimmer is standing there with her eyes on Adora and one hand on the doorknob.

“You ready?” she says. Adora takes a final deep breath. The air outside is cold, sharp, and clean. The air inside will be unnaturally warm, and will drag like water into her lungs. Adora _hates_ that she’s going back into it.

“I am,” Adora says.

“Bow?” Glimmer says. Behind Adora, Bow must nod, because the look on Glimmer’s face turns determined, and she turns the doorknob.

The door swings open smoothly. Shadow Weaver is not waiting behind it, ready to attack. Adora wants to be relieved, but they don’t have the time to waste.

“Hurry,” she says, stepping past Glimmer into the house. “We should move as fast as possible, so you can—“

“Set up the wards before Shadow Weaver realizes we’re here,” Glimmer completes. “I remember, Adora. Stay calm.” Adora nods. She hadn’t intended to let her anxiety slip into her voice. She tries to lock it back into her chest. If she isn’t careful, Glimmer and Bow will realize that something is wrong.

They move into the house in the same careful line as they came up the hill in. Adora can hear Bow’s quiet, rapid breathing behind her, and she watches Glimmer squeeze her staff so tightly that her knuckles turn visibly white, even in the dim light of the inside of the house. Adora doesn’t offer either of them reassurance. She does her best to not make a sound.

They head down the hallway towards the staircase in silence, flashlights aimed at the floor. Adora notices, for the first time, the thick layer of dust that’s settled across it. Such things weren’t clear to the eyes of her spirit form, and the sight draws out a strange emotion in Adora’s chest. The house is _ancient_ , and by extension, so is she. She should be dust, too, should be long gone and rotted away into the earth.

The thought is almost comforting. Adora is a relic of the past. She was never meant to get a second chance.

A cold sensation runs down Adora’s back as she sets foot on the stairs. She inhales sharply as unwanted terror floods into her veins. Suddenly, Bow’s free hand is pressed against her back.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “The stairs—I don’t really know _why_ , but they feel like that. Scary.” _Scary_ is a bit of an understatement, but Adora can’t work up the nerve to speak and tell him that. “It isn’t real,” Bow says quietly, stepping up onto the bottom stair beside Adora. “It’ll stop when we get to the top.” Adora nods, swallows against her suddenly dry throat, and takes another step up the stairs. In front of her, Glimmer is already halfway up, charging onwards as if unaffected. Adora isn’t sure how much of that is courage and how much is bravado, but she admires it either way.

Bow is right. The moment Adora steps off of the stairs and onto the top floor, the terror breaks. The sense of impending doom does not, but that’s not the house. That’s all Adora.

“It was never like that when I was—before,” Adora whispers. “That was…” She shakes her head and tries not to shiver. It’s quite warm in the house, but Adora’s body is whispering to her, pleading with her to turn around and leave.

She ignores it.

The three of them make their way down the hall to the room where Adora’s body once laid. The door is closed; Adora imagines Catra had closed it after Adora escaped with Glimmer and Bow, all those months ago. Catra had always hated that room, hated the sight of her own body crumpled into the corner, dry and dead and slowly fading away.

Adora understands that feeling, now. As she steps into the room, her eyes fall immediately to Catra’s empty form against the wall. It’s so much worse with clear vision than it ever was before. Catra’s hair is dry and stick-like, her fingernails protruding, her skin—

Adora tears her eyes away. Catra won’t look like that for much longer. She’ll be _alive_ again soon. She’ll be how Adora remembers her, and she’ll be _free_.

“I’ll start setting up wards,” Glimmer says. She’s no longer whispering, but her voice is still low and nervous. “You guys—do the spell, I guess.” Adora nods, and Glimmer steps over to one wall of the room, pressing her hand against it and holding her staff tightly in the other. Adora watches the star emblem on the top of it begin to glow for a moment before she refocuses on the task at hand.

Bow is already sitting on the floor, digging through his backpack for the candles and herbs they brought with them. He starts to set up, arranging the candles in a circle, but Adora grabs his wrist to stop him.

“I’ll do it,” she says. “Go stand with Glimmer.” Bow looks very confused by the request, but he obeys, and Adora breathes an internal sigh of relief. If he had questioned it, she isn’t sure what she would’ve said. The truth is that she needs him to not pay too much attention to how she sets up for the spell, but she really doesn’t think Bow would like that explanation.

Bow gets to his feet and walks over to stand by Glimmer. He watches her instead of Adora, drawn in by the purple magic sparking from Glimmer’s fingertips and spreading across the walls. He watches her with an unwavering, awed stare. His infatuation works to Adora’s advantage: she sets up the candles the way she needs them without getting caught. One for each corner, and another in between each set of corners: eight candles forming a neat square. She kneels down in the center of it and squeezes her hands into fists to keep them from shaking before pressing them against her thighs.

It’s time.

Adora starts to speak in Latin. She learned the incantation off of the internet, off a defunct forum from the late nineties that Bow has thoroughly mined for information on battle magic. Adora had found the forum in his laptop’s browser history. She really, really hopes that he hadn’t found the exact page she had learned this spell off of, or she’s about to get caught.

Bow turns away from Glimmer to look at Adora, a deep frown on his face, and Adora’s heart leaps into her throat. All of the walls are glowing purple now as Glimmer’s wards do their job, keeping the demons out of the room. Adora can only hope that, wherever she is in the house, the demons that live inside Shadow Weaver can hear her.

“That isn’t the spell we used last time,” Bow says to Adora. “What are you doing?” Adora just shakes her head. Bow must not recognize her spell, or understand Latin. Adora has a vague understanding of what she’s saying, gleaned from half-remembered childhood Latin lessons at the orphanage she grew up in and Google Translate. “Adora, what are you _doing_?” Bow sounds worried now. Adora shakes her head again. She can’t stop now. She’s almost at the end. She mutters out the last few lines of the spell, and then takes a deep breath to start the final request.

“ _Accipere sacrificium meum_ ,” Adora says. She pauses. The room remains silent and still. The walls shimmer with purple light.

“Adora,” Bow says. He sounds firmer, more authoritative, than Adora has ever heard him be before. “What’s going on?”  
“ _Accipere sacrificium meum_ ,” Adora says again. Again, there’s no response. Glimmer is looking at her too, now, eyes wide and concerned. “ _Accipere sacrificium meum_!” Nothing.

“I don’t think it’s working,” Glimmer says quietly. Adora shakes her head. It _has_ to work. It has to. It isn’t the same, failed spell from last time; Adora isn’t trying to steal the demons’ prey from them. She’s offering a fair trade. There’s no reason for them to reject her.

“ _Accipere sacrificium meum_.” Adora’s voice cracks with desperation as her words becomes a shout. “ _Accipere sacrificium meum_. Accept my sacrifice. Accept my sacrifice!” She barely notices that she’s slipped into English. She wouldn’t know it at all if not for the horrified looks on Bow and Glimmer’s faces.

“Adora, _stop_ ,” Bow says. Adora doesn’t listen.

“Accept my sacrifice! _Please_! Accept my sacrifice! Accept—“

_No._

Adora jolts, falling forward onto her hands and knees. She looks around the room rapidly, but it only confirms what she already knew—the voice is in her head.

“Please,” Adora whispers. The voice laughs. It’s _familiar_ , somehow. It isn’t Shadow Weaver’s voice; it’s the ones that lie underneath. All the voices of hell that speak through her, twining together into one.

_You don’t have a mark,_ the voice says. _The other girl does._ Adora closes her eyes. So that part had been true. The demons want—no, _need_ someone who has been marked since birth.

“You can give me hers,” Adora says. “You can transfer it over. You know that you can.” She won’t let this monster trick her out of her mission. The voice is silent for a moment.

_Why would we do that?_ it asks. It sounds curious now, instead of scornful, and Adora’s eyes begin to open, hope blooming in her chest.

“Because I’m stronger,” she says. “You can sense it. I have magic. I would make you more powerful than she could.”

_You expect me to believe you would let yourself be consumed?_

“No.” Adora finally rights herself, pushing back into a kneeling position, and opens her eyes. Glimmer and Bow are both staring at her, and they look—they look _betrayed_. Adora looks away, her heart breaking. “I would fight,” she says to the voice. “But so will Catra. You’ll struggle either way, but if you win against me…It’s a good deal.” The voice is silent for a long, long time. Adora keeps her eyes fixed on the floor, waiting for an answer, _praying_ for a yes.

Her forehead erupts in agony, and Adora cries out.

_Fine_ , the voice says. _You have a deal._

The room floods with white light.

It’s Adora’s magic. She recognizes it, though she isn’t consciously controlling it. It’s lining itself up just outside of Glimmer’s wards, setting up another line of defense. Through the white light and the purple, though, Adora can see red and black interspersed, pressing at the edges of the room. The demon is coming for her soul.

“Adora?”

Adora’s mouth goes dry. She turns, hardly daring to look, and there, across the room—

— _Catra is sitting up_.

“Catra,” Adora rasps. She stumbles to her feet, nearly tripping over her candles. She hurries over to the corner, where Catra is already trying to push herself to her feet. Adora grabs her by the forearms, pulling her up, and suddenly, Adora is staring into mismatched eyes, seeing them clearly for the first time in a hundred years. “Catra.”

“Adora,” Catra whispers, and God, her voice, _her voice_ —Adora had forgotten what it truly sounded like. She had _forgotten_. How could she have forgotten?

“What’s happening?” Catra says. Adora shakes her head and pulls Catra forward. She wraps her arms around Catra’s shoulders and clutches onto her as tightly as she can. Catra responds immediately, balling her fists in the fabric of Adora’s hoodie and clinging to her. Catra is solid and _real_ beneath Adora’s touch, and more than that, she’s _warm_.

Adora can hardly bear to move back enough to look at Catra, but she does so. She can feel her magic pouring out of her, the barriers keeping the darkness out of the room weakening by the second. She needs to say goodbye.

“Adora,” Catra says again as she looks up at Adora, and Adora tries to memorize that, the way Catra says her name: tries to lock it away and keep it. “You—you cut your hair.” Catra’s hands finally uncurl from the fabric at Adora’s back and come up. She reaches out, fingertips tracing gentle patterns on the shaved sides of Adora’s head.

“I did,” Adora whispers, and laughs.

“You came back,” Catra says. “You came back for me.” She sounds _surprised_ , and Adora’s heart clenches.

“I did,” she says again. “I did. I promised.” A multitude of expressions pass over Catra’s face, and Adora has mostly forgotten how to read them over the years, but she recognizes the one Catra settles on as worry.

“You’re bleeding,” Catra says. Adora blinks, suddenly remembers the pain in her forehead, and raises her hand to touch it. Her fingertips come away bloody. “What is that?” Catra asks. “Some kind of symbol?” _The mark._ Adora hadn’t known it would be literal.

“Adora?” It’s Bow’s voice, now, somehow gentle and terrified at the same time. Adora turns around and finds Bow and Glimmer staring at her. Behind them, the white light outside Glimmer’s wards is being eaten away rapidly, the room dimming by the second. The demons will be coming down on Glimmer’s magic soon, and she won’t be able to hold them back for long.

“I made a deal,” Adora says. Catra reaches out and takes her hand. They’d held hands for decades as ghosts, but this is—this is so much _more_. Catra’s hand is warm and calloused, and it’s the best thing Adora has felt in a century.

“Yeah, I think we all picked up on that,” Glimmer says. “What kind of deal?”

“It was the only thing I could do,” Adora says. “A fair trade.”

“A trade,” Bow echoes. “You for Catra.” Adora nods. “Are you—are you going to die?” Adora can’t even make herself nod. She just stays silent, and lets their eye contact drop. Behind her, Catra inhales sharply.

“I—I need to say some things,” Adora whispers. Nobody else in the room speaks. Bow is staring at her with a heartbroken look in his eyes, and Glimmer looks _enraged_ , and Adora is too afraid to turn around and see what Catra thinks of all this. Adora just—she just needs to get through her goodbyes, first.

“Thank you,” Adora says to Bow and Glimmer. “Both of you. For—everything. For my second chance. And—and Bow, thank your dads for me, okay? Tell them I love them, okay?”

“Adora,” Bow says. He’s crying now, and he can’t seem to manage another word.

“Tell me what you did,” Glimmer says. She isn’t crying. Her jaw is clenched, and Adora could swear her eyes are _glowing_ purple. “ _Exactly_ what you did, and I’ll figure out a way to fix it.” Adora just shakes her head. Glimmer can’t fix it because there’s nothing _wrong_. Adora has done the right thing. She’s made the best choice. None of Glimmer’s magic could change things now.

Adora just wishes she wasn’t upsetting them both so much. But this is why she hadn’t told them about her plans sooner. She knew it would only break their hearts, and there’s nothing she can do to make them feel better now. So instead, she turns around and faces Catra.

“Adora,” Catra begins, but Adora is already shaking her head. She can walk away from Bow and Glimmer’s heartbreak. She could never do that to Catra.

“Listen,” Adora says, cutting Catra off. “The world is—it’s so different now. But you’re going to love it, okay? It’s—it’s bigger, and kinder, and more beautiful. You can trust Bow and Glimmer. They’ll be good to you, so trust them. You’re going to love it out there. I promise.”

“No.” Catra is shaking her head, and there’s a layer of tears over her eyes now, reflecting the purple light of Glimmer’s wards. “No, Adora, I love _you_.” Adora exhales hard, like she’s been punched in the stomach. They’ve said it before, of course, but to hear it in Catra’s real voice, without the distortion of half-death between them—

“But you don’t have to forever,” Adora says quietly, once she can breathe again. Catra makes a small, panicked noise. “You’ll—you have a life to—

“ _Adora_.” Catra sounds desperate. “I love _you_.”

Adora kisses her. For the first time in a century of loving her, Adora kisses her. Catra’s lips are warm, and chapped, and suddenly Adora isn’t afraid of the looming eternity of cold. This moment is all of the warmth and light and love that Adora will ever need.

“I love you,” Adora says as they break apart. “So much.” She pulls Catra into another embrace, and Catra claws at her back, fingernails digging in even through the thick fabric of Adora’s hoodie, like she’s trying to hold her down and _make_ her stay.

“Adora, _please_ ,” Catra says, and Adora flinches like she’s been struck. She can’t do this. She can’t listen to Catra beg for her to—

“Stay.” Catra’s tears are beginning to fall. “ _Please_ stay. I can’t—not without you. Not without you.” Adora kisses her again. It tastes like salt this time, and Adora realizes that she’s crying, too.

“You can,” she says. Catra shakes her head.

“I _can’t_ , I—you’re going to hurt so much in here. I won’t think of anything else. Shadow Weaver is—it’s so much worse when you’re alone.” Adora’s chest _aches_ at the words, at the months she had left Catra alone in this house to suffer. She deserves the same fate, for _living_ again so happily while Catra remained trapped.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Glimmer says from across the room. Adora looks up, and finds that the white light outside the wards has completely vanished. Adora’s magic is depleted, and the demons’ full power is battering against Glimmer’s shimmering purple wards. “I can’t hold this for long,” Glimmer says, looking at Adora. Adora nods. She needs to hurry up. There’s still some things she needs to say.

“I’ll be alright,” Adora says, turning back to Catra. “I figured it out. Look.” She raises a hand, and while she may not have the power to fight of demons at the moment, she still has enough magic to make her palm glow. Catra’s eyes go wide. “I know how to use it now,” Adora says, lowering her hand. “I figured it all out. It’s love. It’s always been love. That’s the key. That’s all my power is.”

“That’s why Ms. Weaver couldn’t take it,” Catra whispers. “That’s why—that night, it came out.” Adora nods.

“I love you,” she says. “So I saved you. And I’ve got all the love in the world now, between Glimmer and Bow and you. So I’ll be fine. I can hold Shadow Weaver off forever.” Catra shakes her head.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she says.

“You won’t be.” Adora’s eyes flick over to Glimmer and Bow, who are still watching in horror from the other side of the room. Bow is still crying, but when he meets Adora’s eyes, he nods. Catra will be safe. “Catra, I wish—I—“ Adora can’t say it. She can’t even _think_ it, not for real. The only way she’ll make it through eternity in this house is if she doesn’t let herself want anything else.

“It’ll be okay,” Adora says instead.

“Wards are about to go down,” Glimmer calls from the other side of the room. Adora pulls Catra to her, wrapping her arms around her one last time. Catra buries her face in Adora’s shoulder, and Adora forces herself to ignore the way she can feel Catra shaking as she sobs.

Adora summons her magic, one last time. Even through closed eyelids, she can see the room fill with light once more. She aims the magic upwards, towards the purple glow of the wards on the ceiling, and cuts through, leaving a hole big enough for a demon.

Darkness floods the room. She opens her eyes, takes one last deep breath as she memorizes the shape of Catra’s body in her arms, and then allows it to take her.

Adora dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...i would like to remind you again of the first author's note on this fic, where i promised that it is not a tragedy and that all the main characters would end up happily together with their partner and their friends. that is still true. i promise you it really does have a happy ending. we'll get there. i promise.
> 
> if you wanna follow me or send me hate messages for what i've done, i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan and on twitter @sevens_evan. please leave a comment if you enjoyed this chapter or if you would like to personally murder me with your bare hands, i would appreciate either type. thanks for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a day later than i would've liked to post it but if you follow me on twitter or tumblr you saw the saga of my internet being down for like 16 hours, lmao. at any rate, it's up now and i'm feeding y'all. definitely trigger warnings for this chapter; there's a lot of discussion of suicidality and depression and generally bad mental health and even worse decisions. it's a very heavy one, and it's also very long, so take care of yourself as you read.
> 
> also, the response to last chapter was just as fun as i imagined it would be. i love y'all.

Catra is still holding onto Adora when it happens. One moment, she’s crying into the soft fabric at Adora’s shoulder, clutching at her shoulders like it will keep Adora here. The next, she’s holding onto nothing at all, and she opens her eyes to find a thin cloud of dust where Adora once was. Catra tries to grab at it, tries to catch it in her hands, but it’s useless. It’s just dust, and it floats between her fingers before it settles to the floor.

“Oh my god,” someone says from across the room. Catra looks over. It’s the girl Adora had brought with her who’s speaking, the one who had cast all the spells. She’s staring at the spot where Adora had disappeared. Glimmer, Catra is pretty sure Adora had called her.

“Go,” Catra says. Adora’s friends look at her, eyes wide.

“What?” Bow says.

“ _Go_.” Catra looks away from them, back at the multicolored lights all over the walls. The purple-red and black outside the wards has faded somewhat, but it hasn’t disappeared. The demons took Adora’s deal, but they’ll eat the rest of them, too, if they get the chance.

_Good_.

“She’s right,” Glimmer says to Bow. “We have to leave. Shadow Weaver backed off, but I can’t hold the wards much longer.”

“I…” Bow stares at the floor where Adora had stood. He looks confused, and helpless, and Catra feels bad for him for a moment. Clearly, Adora hadn’t told her friends what she was planning. “Okay,” he finally says. “Okay, let’s go.” He grabs Glimmer’s hand, and they both head towards the door.

They almost make it out before they realize that Catra isn’t following them.

“Come on,” Glimmer says, turning to look at her. “We’re almost out of time.” Catra says nothing. Beside her, the dust-that-was-Adora has settled into a noticeable pile on the floor.

“Catra, we have to go,” Bow says.

“No.” Catra digs her fingernails into her palms. “I won’t. I…” Her voice is still shaking from her earlier tears, and she goes silent instead of struggling through words.

“If you stay here, you’ll _die_ ,” Glimmer says. Catra says nothing, which is an answer in and of itself. “I swear to God, we will drag you out of here if we have to,” Glimmer says. She points her staff at Catra, and purple magic sparks at the end. For a moment, it looks just like Shadow Weaver’s lightning. Catra flinches and takes a step back.

“Stop,” Bow says. He grabs Glimmer’s staff and pushes it aside. “You’re scaring her.” Catra doesn’t necessarily agree with that assessment of the situation, but she doesn’t speak up to argue with it. “Listen, Catra,” Bow says. He takes a step forward, looking at her intently. “You have to come with us. Shadow Weaver will—“

“You don’t know _anything_ ,” Catra interrupts, “about what Shadow Weaver might do.” She hates the way they’re both talking about Shadow Weaver, using the name Catra and Adora had come up with, like they’re _familiar_ with her. Like they _understand_.

“Okay,” Bow says. “I don’t. But we can’t leave you here.” Catra shakes her head. She has to stay. She _has_ to. The demons can take her, too, put her back in the form she was in before—where she has to assume, has to _hope_ Adora is now: trapped between life and death. If Catra stays, if she gives herself up, she’ll be where Adora is. Forever. Adora won’t be alone, like Catra has been for so long. She won’t have to suffer the way Catra has. But if Catra _leaves_ —

“Leave me here,” Catra says. “I’m staying.”

“Catra,” Glimmer says from across the room. “Adora asked us to take care of you. And that means keeping you alive, even if you don’t want to be. So just—make this easy for us, alright?” Catra closes her eyes. Glimmer has a point. If these two love Adora half as much as Catra does—though Catra doubts anyone is capable of that—they will physically drag her out of this house if it means fulfilling Adora’s wishes.

Catra can’t stay. At least, not for now.

“Okay,” Catra whispers, opening her eyes. Bow’s wide-eyed, desperate look breaks into something that’s close to a smile. He turns away again, heading for the door, and this time, Catra follows him.

Behind them, the glowing purple wards shatter into pieces, and darkness floods the room, pouring itself over the floorboards, Ms. Weaver’s body on the floor, and the pile of dust in the center of the room.

* * *

Bow and Glimmer take her down the hill to Bow’s _car_. On the way down, and even more on the drive through Bright Moon, they try to catch her up on everything she’s missed while she was inside the house. Catra half-listens, absorbing information about world wars, racial equality, _computers_ , but she’s much more interested in the world passing by outside the window. She wants to memorize their route so she can retrace it later.

Unfortunately, the streets have changed quite a bit in a hundred and ten years, and Catra was never that familiar with Bright Moon anyway. She never spent much time in town. Ms. Weaver didn’t like her to wander too far—probably afraid that her born-and-raised demon food would disappear. Reluctantly, Catra pulls her gaze away from the window and refocuses on the inside of the car, which has been silent for several minutes now, as Bow and Glimmer seem to have run out of world events to clumsily summarize for her.

“You sure your parents will be okay with this?” Bow says quietly. Glimmer sighs heavily.

“I have no idea,” she says. “But at least my parents believe in magic, right? I’m not sure your dads will buy the whole _here’s our ex-ghost friend_ spiel twice. And I know taking care of Adora was…getting expensive.”

“…Yeah.” Bow slows the car and pilots them around a corner. Catra watches him spin the steering wheel in his hands and thinks, for a moment, that if she was going to stay here she’d like to learn to drive. “I mean, they don’t mind,” Bow says. “They love her.” He pauses. “Loved her.” The past tense makes Catra _angry_ , but she doesn’t say a word. She doesn’t know these two, and the only person who has ever made Catra feel like her anger _matters_ is Adora.

_Was Adora_ , her mind corrects without her permission. Catra grits her teeth at the thought.

“We’re here,” Bow says as the car slows to a stop. He turns around in his chair to make eye contact with Catra. “Listen,” he says. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning, okay? Glimmer’s family is great, they’ll be really nice to you. Just get some rest and we can start figuring everything out tomorrow.” There’s very little to figure out, in Catra’s opinion, but she doesn’t voice it. She just nods and unbuckles her seatbelt. Bow gives her one last reassuring look before she climbs out of the car.

“Time to meet my parents, I guess,” Glimmer mumbles as she joins Catra by the front porch of her house. “My dad knows who you are, like, more or less. My mom…doesn’t. I don’t really want to tell her, like, _right_ now.” She pauses, looking at Catra like she’s waiting for a response, and Catra realizes that she’s being told what to do. She does not take kindly to that.

“You want me to pretend that I _belong_ here?” Catra says. “Are you stupid?” Glimmer’s expectant look rapidly becomes a frown.

“It won’t be _that_ hard,” she says. “All you have to do is not talk.” Catra takes a deep breath. She truly, truly cannot handle this—this _annoying_ girl on top of everything else in her head right now.

“Fine,” Catra snaps. “Would you like me to pretend to be mute while I’m at it?”

“Hey.” Glimmer sounds offended. “I’m trying to help you, here. Do you wanna sleep on the streets?”

“I _wanted_ to—“ Catra cuts herself off. She gets the feeling that if she’s too honest about what she _wants_ right now, Glimmer and Bow will find a way to prevent it from ever happening. “Whatever,” she says instead. “I’ll be quiet.” Agreeing to it leaves a bitter taste in Catra’s mouth. Glimmer doesn’t notice her discomfort, or at least pays no more attention to it than she has been.

Catra follows Glimmer up the steps and into the house. It’s nice inside—much warmer than the air outside, which had cut through the fabric of Catra’s dress like it’s made of paper. The room they step into is lit by electricity, which Catra had been told to expect, but it still takes her a little off-guard. Glimmer leads Catra through the small entryway and down a short hallway into another room, with a couch, some armchairs, and a low table between them.

There’s a man sitting inside, on the couch. He looks a _lot_ like Glimmer, and Catra assumes this must be her father. The moment he sees them, he gets to his feet.

“What happened?” he asks. “How did it go?” His eyes flick over to Catra briefly, taking in her old clothes and blank expression.

“It…” Glimmer takes a deep, shaky breath. “We saved Catra. As you can see.” She gestures vaguely at Catra. The man nods. “But Adora—Adora didn’t make it.” Catra wants to laugh at the euphemism. What a funny way to explain Adora throwing her life away—a life neither of them were ever supposed to have—for _Catra_ , of all people.

“No,” the man says, quiet and disbelieving. Glimmer just shrugs. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you three go alone,” he says after a moment. “I should’ve gone with you. I—“

“We talked about this, Dad,” Glimmer interrupts. “We don’t know what Shadow Weaver would’ve done if she saw you, with your history. It would’ve made everything unpredictable. And it—it wouldn’t have made a difference, anyway. Adora _chose_ to—to—“ She stutters to a stop.

“Adora traded herself for me,” Catra says. She sees no reason to dance around it. Glimmer’s father looks at her with horror in his eyes.

“We probably shouldn’t tell Mom, right?” Glimmer says. “Can we _please_ not tell Mom?”

“Tell me what?” Catra turns as a new figure enters the room, sweeping in from the hallway. It’s a very tall, very intense-looking woman, and Catra knows from context that this must be Glimmer’s mother, but it strikes her as odd all the same that both of Glimmer’s parents would be so tall while Glimmer herself is shorter than Catra. “And who is our guest?” Glimmer’s mother says, standing next to her husband and turning to look at Catra.

“This is Catra,” Glimmer says. “It’s—a little complicated, but she’s that friend of Adora’s I told you about. We—we saved her.” Catra doesn’t feel very _saved_. “She needs a place to stay. I was hoping she could have the guest room, at least for tonight.”

“She can stay,” Glimmer’s mother says, and Catra blinks in surprise. _It was that easy?_ “But I’m going to need the _full_ story about all of this from you, Glimmer. Every bit of it.”

“Mom—“ Glimmer sighs. “You’re just going to be mad at me.”

“In that case, I’d like to hear it right away.” Glimmer shakes her head.

“I guess it was too much to hope that you wouldn’t ask,” she mutters. “Can I set Catra up for the night, first? I’m sure she’s tired.”

“Alright,” Glimmer’s mother relents. She turns to Catra, offering a small smile. “I’m Angella, and this is my husband Micah. You’re welcome here,” she says. “Whatever is going on, that will stay true.” Her words and tone are kind. It’s an immense kindness on Angella’s part, really, to open up her home so readily to a random girl in strange clothes that her daughter has dragged home, and it means absolutely nothing to Catra. She isn’t planning on staying very long.

“Thank you,” Catra says. Angella nods, and Glimmer reaches out, grabbing Catra’s forearm and tugging. Catra jerks her arm out of the grasp immediately, barely suppressing a shout.

Glimmer’s hand is _warm_. Adora’s had been, too, but Catra had assumed that to be a feature of the heat that she remembers constantly emanating from Adora’s body in the year before they died, not—not something _normal_. Catra almost hates the feeling, hates the warmth coming from anyone except Adora.

“Don’t touch me,” Catra says. Glimmer lowers her hand.

“Sorry,” she says. She sounds like she means it. Catra doesn’t care.

Catra follows Glimmer deeper into the house, down a hallway and up a set of stairs. Eventually, Glimmer opens a door to reveal a bedroom. It’s nondescript, undecorated, with off-white walls and plain white sheets. The only particularly personal touch is a quilt laid over the bed. Catra assumes this must be the guest room.

Across the room is a window, and just outside of it is a tree. Catra breathes an internal sigh of relief at how easy her departure will be. She has experience with sneaking out of windows.

“I’ll get you some clothes to sleep in,” Glimmer says. “They’ll probably be kind of big on you.” Catra nods. She hops that, whatever Glimmer brings her, it’s easy to walk in. She has no idea how fast Bow’s car was moving earlier, but she has at least several miles to walk, barefoot, in the snow.

Glimmer leaves the room. Catra sits down on the edge of the bed and stares down at the carpet beneath her feet. She could explore the room, look for something to help her: maybe a pair of shoes, or even just socks. But she can’t work up the energy to move. She’s _exhausted_. She hasn’t slept in a century, and everything takes _effort_ now. The running, and talking, and just _thinking_ takes so much more energy than it had when she was not-quite-dead. And emotions, too. _Feeling_ everything she had felt earlier when Adora—

“Here.” It’s Glimmer. She’s standing in the doorway, a hesitant half-smile on her face and a bundle of clothes in her arms. Catra doesn’t respond to the word or the smile. She just gets to her feet and takes the clothes. It’s a pair of loose, grey pants that look warm—good for the walk, Catra notes—and a blue sweater of similar weight and texture, with yellow words on the front and back. “Are those okay?” Glimmer asks. Catra glances up at her.

“Fine,” she says. Glimmer is still staring at her, and Catra half-wants to just start changing in front of her in hopes of driving her away. “What?” Catra says instead.

“I just—don’t you have questions?” Glimmer says.

“About what?”

“I mean, _everything_?” Glimmer gestures at the room around them. “Cars? Phones? Electricity? Women wearing pants?”

“You’re wearing pants,” Catra points out. “And clearly, women have never been physically incapable of wearing pants. Obviously things have changed.” Honestly, she does have questions, but she isn’t particularly interested in the answers. She doesn’t need to understand this new world. She won’t be staying long.

“I—yeah, okay,” Glimmer says, subsiding a bit. “I’m just confused, I guess. Adora had a lot of questions.” _Of course she did_. Catra suppresses a smile at the thought. Adora was always so _interested_ in things: politics, the stars, literature, art. She was probably unbearably excited when she first came back. It would’ve been beautiful to see. Catra, though—Catra had always had more immediate problems. She’d never had the time to grow those sorts of interests, and she doesn’t have it now.

“I’m not Adora,” Catra says quietly. Glimmer nods. She still hasn’t left the room, though, so Catra puts her original plan into action. She turns around, setting the clothes Glimmer had brought on the bed, and twists her arms back to start unlacing her dress.

“Whoa!” Glimmer says. “I’m still here.”

“Yes,” Catra says. “That’s the problem.” She looks back over her shoulder, the back of her dress already half-undone, and finds Glimmer staring at the ceiling.

“You could just ask me to leave, you know,” Glimmer says without looking down. Catra snorts.

“You don’t seem like the type to do what you’re told,” she says.

“I’m…not,” Glimmer admits. She lets her eyes drop slightly, and they widen as she catches sight of Catra’s back. “Whoa,” she says again, but this time, her tone is quiet, a horrified kind of awe.

Too late, Catra remembers that her body is marked. She hasn’t had a real form in decades, let alone anyone around to _see_ it. She’d forgotten all about this. She thinks about pulling her dress back up, covering the lines on her back, but Glimmer has already seen them, and surely already has questions.

“What are those?” _There it is_.

“Scars,” Catra says shortly. She doesn’t want to talk about this. Glimmer doesn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, but what, I mean, what even _does_ that?” she says. “They’re all…spiky.” Catra sighs.

“Lightning,” she says. “Ms. Weaver’s favorite toy.” Catra pulls her dress back up and turns around just in time to see Glimmer stiffen.

“ _Ms._ Weaver?” she says. “That happened…before?”

“Obviously,” Catra says. “I couldn’t scar as a spirit.” She isn’t oblivious to the source of Glimmer’s horror, of course, but she doesn’t feel like coddling someone through a retelling of her childhood at the moment.

“I didn’t…” Glimmer shakes her head. “Adora said that Ms. Weaver wasn’t…good. And she told us that she could summon lightning, but I didn’t…”

“Make the connection?” Catra says. Glimmer nods. “You obviously don’t know very much about the situation. Maybe Adora didn’t trust you as much as you thought.” Glimmer _flinches_. Catra tries to find pleasure in her discomfort—these are the people that dragged Adora away from her, allowed Adora to make the trade, and, to top it all off, Glimmer is _irritating_. Catra should be glad to see her upset. But she isn’t. Glimmer looks _hurt_ by Catra’s suggestion, and she doesn’t take it out on Catra. Instead, she backs off, turning towards the bedroom door.

“Good night, Catra,” Glimmer says. “I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll—figure stuff out.”

“Good night,” Catra responds automatically. Glimmer nods and steps out into the hallway, closing the bedroom door behind her. Catra has succeeded, finally, in driving her away.

Catra changes clothes quickly. The sweater and pants Glimmer had brought her are warm, soft, and too big for Catra in several places. They’re _immensely_ comfortable, and they make Catra want to curl up in the blankets on the guest bed and _sleep_.

Instead, she walks across the room to the window.

The exact latch mechanism is unfamiliar to her, but it doesn’t take Catra long to figure out. In minutes, she has the narrow window open, and she sticks her head out of it as she tries to plot a path to the ground. It isn’t a difficult task. There’s a narrow strip of trim just beneath the window that she can balance on, and the tree is easily reachable after that.

Much more concerning than the climb is the _cold_. Just having the window open is flooding the room with freezing air. Catra is already shivering. She’ll have to climb quickly before her hands grow numb and clumsy, and the long walk after that…

Catra clenches her teeth. She isn’t going to give up. She can make it a few miles, as long as she keeps moving. A little cold won’t stop her from getting back to Adora.

But God, she wishes she had shoes. Even the old, rotting ones she had abandoned in the house’s entryway would be better than nothing.

Catra climbs over the windowsill and slides the window shut behind her. She can’t latch it from the outside, but keeping the wind and cold out will hopefully prevent anyone from coming to check on her before morning. By that time, she’ll be long gone.

Catra’s breath fogs in front of her as she descends the tree. Its bark is cold and slippery, and she has to dig her fingernails in to maintain her grasp, wincing as a few stray splinters slip underneath. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as everything Shadow Weaver has thrown at her over the last century, but the pain is _sharper_ in human form, more distinct. She doesn’t like it one bit.

By the time Catra reaches the ground, her entire body is trembling violently. She isn’t so sure, anymore, that she’ll make it to the house. Her toes are already going numb on the frozen grass of Glimmer’s lawn; her teeth are chattering.

Catra could turn around. There’s no way she could make it back up the tree, but she could go back up the front porch. Glimmer’s parents would raise their eyebrows at her climbing out of the bedroom they’ve lent her in the middle of the night, but Catra strongly doubts they would turn her away. She could go back up to the guest bedroom, lie down beneath the blankets and be _warm_.

But if she does that, Glimmer will want to know why she snuck out, and once she does, she’ll never let Catra die in peace.

Catra walks quickly out of the yard and onto the street. The paved path beside the road is even colder than the grass; it seems to pull the last of the body heat from Catra’s feet. She grits her teeth as hard she can against the shivers and keeps walking.

She does her best to retrace the path of Bow’s car, but the streets are unfamiliar to her. She doesn’t allow herself to panic over it. New world or not, she still has a decent sense of direction. She knows which hill the house is on, and which way it is from here. She just has to follow the streets that way.

By the time Catra has been walking for five minutes, her breaths are beginning to hurt. It’s _so cold_. She had thought she had known cold for the past hundred years, that death was the coldest a human being could get. She was wrong. It’s much colder out here, in a body, in the world, _alive_.

A loud noise blasts behind her. Catra jumps in place, adrenaline flooding her veins. She whips around, looking for the source, and doesn’t have to look very far.

A car is pulling up behind her. It’s smaller and sleeker than Bow’s, which resembles a box on wheels. There’s something attached to the roof, flashing blue and red lights that shut off as the sound dies away. Catra stands where she is, unsure what the lights signify, who has come to find her, or what she’s supposed to do about any of it.

The car pulls up next to where Catra is standing, and one of the windows rolls down. The driver leans towards it, looking up at Catra. It’s a woman—dark skinned, with a warm smile and, oddly, bright white hair despite the fact that she can’t be older than thirty-five.

“Hey,” she says. “You look pretty cold.”

“I’m fine,” Catra says. The woman’s tone is friendly, and Catra doesn’t want to be rude, because she’s learning that that doesn’t tend to make people leave her alone these days like it used to, but she also doesn’t want to waste time that she could be using to walk.

“Uh-huh,” the woman says. “And that’s why you’re wandering around barefoot in the middle of the night while it’s five degrees out.” _Apparently sarcasm hasn't changed in the past hundred years_.

“I know where I’m going,” Catra says.

“Where’s that?” The woman leans forward further, resting her forearm on the door of the car where the window had disappeared.

“That is not your business,” Catra says, and the woman _laughs_.

“You’re right,” she says. “It isn’t. But, y’know, I see a kid wandering around freezing to death, I’ve kinda got a moral obligation to not let them die. So, unless wherever you’re going is inside in the next two minutes, I’m gonna have to make it my business.”

“I’m going to a friend’s house,” Catra says, which is close enough to being true that it’s very easy to lie about with a straight face.

“Yeah?” the woman says. “What about going home? Any interest in that?”

“Not particularly.” Catra is tiring of this conversation. She turns away from the woman and begins to walk again.

To her _immense_ irritation, the car begins to drive alongside her.

“Listen,” the woman says. “You seem upset, and whatever you’re upset about isn’t my business. I get that. But I’ve gotta ask you to find somewhere indoors to be. Like I said, really not a fan of kids dying in my town.” Catra takes a deep breath, pressing her hands to her face to try to calm down. It’s a bad decision. Her fingers are _freezing_ , and she hisses quietly as she pulls them away from her eyelids.

“I will do that if you leave me _alone_ ,” she says, stopping and turning to glare at the woman. “You’re making it _really_ difficult to get where I’m going.” The woman looks at her silently for a moment, an irritatingly perceptive look in her eyes.

“You don’t have anywhere to go, huh,” she says quietly. It isn’t a question.

“I—“ Catra crosses her arms and looks away. She has a place she _could_ go, and a place she’s _trying_ to go. But she doesn’t have anywhere she really _wants_ to go. She doesn’t want to go back to the house on the hill. She doesn’t want to die, not really. She just wants to go back to Adora.

“Look,” the woman says. “It’s really cold out here. You can come back to the station with me and warm up, and we can figure out how to find you a place to stay.”

“The station?” Catra says. “What station?” The woman stares at her incredulously.

“The _police_ station?” she says. “I’m a cop?” Catra blinks, looks at the woman again, noticing the vaguely militaristic uniform and the badge shining on her chest. Catra has been standing here bickering grumpily with a _cop_. Which means that she probably doesn’t actually have much of a choice in whether or not she goes back to the station with this woman.

Catra can’t find it in herself to be upset about that. She’s too cold, and too tired, so instead of arguing, she walks around the front of the car on shaky legs and slides down into the passenger seat.

* * *

“Feeling any better?” Netossa asks as she sits down across from Catra. Her desk stands between them, and the small, shiny plaque designating her as not only a police officer, but chief of police rests on it. Catra adjusts her grip on the blanket Netossa had given her, pulling it tighter around her shoulders, and nods. She’s still freezing; that feeling isn’t about to go away any time soon, but her shivers have become less violent, and she can almost feel her feet again. She’s lucky she didn’t get frostbitten.

“Thank you,” Catra says quietly. Netossa nods.

“Nice sweatshirt,” she says. Catra glances down at the sweater she’s wearing. It looks rather plain to her, but she offers Netossa as polite of a smile as she can muster. “You go to Bright Moon High?” Netossa asks, and oh, Catra can tell where this is going. This is the same circular sort of questioning Ms. Weaver used to use on her before she learned that force worked better: seemingly random questions building to a greater whole, obfuscating the actual _point_ of the conversation until Catra has already dug herself a grave.

“Why don’t you ask me what you actually want to know?” Catra says. She isn’t awake enough to play this game right now. Netossa blinks, seeming surprised that Catra has seen through her, but—to Catra’s surprise—acquiesces.

“That’s a Bright Moon High track and field sweatshirt, and it has a number seven on the back,” Netossa says—none of which Catra can verify for herself, but she has no reason to doubt that it’s true. “It’s Bow’s. Right?” She says the name with a weight to it, like she’s trying to get a reaction from Catra. She succeeds.

“You know Bow?” Catra says.

“I know his family.” Netossa reaches out to her desk, turning a photo around to show it to Catra. Catra looks at it curiously. It shows—in color, which shouldn’t be surprising to Catra considering the technology she’s seen and been told about in the past few hours, but somehow is anyway—Netossa alongside another woman, who has…purple hair? Pink hair? Catra can’t make out the exact shade. The women are standing close together, arms around each other, huge smiles on their faces. “George and Lance were sort of our heroes when we first moved here,” Netossa says. “They were proof that a gay couple could be, y’know, accepted around here. Bright Moon is a really chill town, but I didn’t know that when Spinny took a job here. So they meant a lot to us.”

“That’s your…wife?” Catra says. The word sits strangely on her tongue. She had been informed, very briefly, in the car about gay rights, and marriage specifically. She had been told about Bow’s dads. She knows, intellectually, that the world has changed, even if the idea hasn’t really sunk in yet. But it’s something else entirely to sit here _discussing_ it.

“Sure is,” Netossa says. She turns the photo back around. “So, yeah, I know Bow. And his dads, and all of their other kids. He give you that sweater?” Catra says nothing. Netossa sighs deeply. “Please don’t make me call them and ask,” she says. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Why would you need to contact them?” Catra asks.

“Looking for a place for you to stay, remember?” Netossa says. “George and Lance could tell me some stuff. Like, who you are, for starters. Where you’re from. Why you were wandering down the street in the middle of the night with no shoes on.”

“They can’t tell you anything.” Catra isn’t even sure why she’s being unhelpful anymore. There’s no way she’ll make it up to the house tonight. If Netossa contacts Bow’s fathers, she’ll eventually find out, one way or another, that Catra is meant to be staying with Glimmer’s family. No matter what Catra says, this is going to end up with her going back to Glimmer’s house.

She’s just delaying the inevitable, she supposes. She doubts Glimmer’s parents are going to be very happy with their guest running off and getting picked up by the cops.

“Okay, fine,” Netossa says. She sounds frustrated by now. “I’ll ask them.”

“You do that.” Catra watches as Netossa picks up an odd device from her desk and hold it against her ear. It’s connected by a tightly-curled cord to a set of buttons, and Catra realizes that it’s a telephone. Nothing like the only ones she’d ever seen pictures of, but definitely a telephone—since Netossa is now speaking into it.

“Hi, Bow,” Netossa says into the phone. “This is Netossa. Sorry for calling so late. I was out on patrol earlier and I picked up a kid, girl around your age, wearing a track sweatshirt with your number on it. Won’t tell me where she’s from or where she’s staying. Any idea what that’s about?” Catra closes her eyes. She can just barely hear Bow talking on the other end of the line. “Right,” Netossa says. Catra opens her eyes just a sliver and finds Netossa looking at her. “Okay. I’ll give them a call. Get some sleep, it’s past your bedtime.” She replaces the handset next to the block of buttons and gives Catra a long look.

“What?” Catra says. Netossa shakes her head.

“He said you’re supposed to be staying with his friend Glimmer’s family,” she says. “That ring a bell for you?” Catra pulls her feet up onto her chair, under her blanket, and says nothing. Netossa sighs again. “He also said your name is Catra. Any thoughts on _that_?”

“That’s correct,” Catra says quietly. Something flashes in Netossa’s eyes then, sharp and bright and almost like _recognition_. But that doesn’t make any sense.

“Uncommon name,” Netossa says, and her tone has drifted back to what it was before: deceptively conversational, circling her meaning like a shark in the water. “Is that a family name?” Catra doesn’t know what she’s pushing for here, but whatever it is feels like a trap. So she says nothing, resting her chin on her knees. Netossa stares at her for a long, silent moment before she nods to herself and reaches for the phone again.

Catra spaces out a bit as Netossa talks into the phone, presumably to Angella or Micah. She catches the words _come pick up_ and isn’t sure if she should be happy or not that she isn’t being kicked out of Glimmer’s house. Mostly, though, she’s too tired to think about anything at all.

“Hey.” Netossa is speaking directly to her now, and Catra forces herself to blink her eyes open— _when did they shut?_ —and pay attention. “How are you feeling?” Netossa asks. Catra shrugs.

“Still cold,” she admits. She actually feels more cold now than she did a few minutes ago. Her limbs and extremities aren’t numb anymore, and she can feel the lingering chill in her fingers sharply.

“Yeah.” Netossa sounds sympathetic. “Well, hey, at least you aren’t frostbitten, right?”

“Right.” Catra can’t manage to sound enthusiastic, but she does agree with the sentiment. She had met a man in town a few times who’d had the tip of his nose frozen off when he was young. It wasn’t an attractive picture, and she’s quite glad she didn’t end up in a similar state.

Catra has the sudden realization that that man is dead now.

“I’ll get you some hot chocolate,” Netossa says quietly. She gets to her feet and heads out of the office, back to the larger rooms of the police station. Catra pays no attention to her movements. She’s processing, for the first time, that everyone she knew, the town she called home, the streets she remembers, the sweet dog at the closest neighbor’s house down the hill—all of it is gone. Dead. And Catra had spent practically no time in town anyway, she didn’t really _know_ anyone other than Adora, but—

Adora is dead, too.

“Here you go.” Netossa is back. She’s holding out a small white cup to Catra. Numbly, Catra takes it, and the heat of the liquid inside warms her fingers pleasantly. She holds the cup close to her face, trying to absorb as much of the heat as possible. The drink smells wonderful: sweet and rich. “You don’t have any obligation to talk to me,” Netossa says as Catra takes her first sip, discovering that it tastes just as good as it smells—chocolate. “I found you a place to stay, so I already did my job. But I’m a pretty good listener, so if you wanna talk about whatever had you out wandering around in the cold, I’d love to hear about it.” Maybe it’s the warmth of the drink in her hands, or the taste of the chocolate, or the generosity of giving it to Catra in the first place—generosity that no one has ever shown Catra before—but Catra finally decides to let Netossa listen.

“I…lost a friend,” she says quietly. “She died. I…” Catra doesn’t know what else she can say. All of the details are too insane to tell a stranger, even a nice one, let alone a cop.

“Oh.” Netossa gets this _understanding_ look in her eyes, and Catra _hates_ that. She _doesn’t_ understand. No one does; no one _can_. No one except Adora. “I know how that feels,” Netossa begins, but Catra is already shaking her head.

“No,” she says. “You don’t. She—we—she meant _so much_ to me. So much. I—“ Catra cuts herself off and swallows hard. She isn’t going to cry. Not in front of a stranger, not for the second time tonight.

“Catra,” Netossa says. “I _understand_. Spinnerella got in a car accident a few years ago when I was working. I was the first person on the scene. I saw the car, with the front end totally collapsed, and I was _sure_ that she was dead. She wasn’t, and she ended up okay, but I know how it feels. At least for a few minutes. And I’ve lost friends for real. So I get it. I know how it feels.” Catra shakes her head.

“How long have you known your wife?” she asks. Netossa blinks.

“Since we were teenagers,” she says. “Around your age. Why?” Catra just shakes her head again. Netossa can’t be more than twice Catra’s eighteen years. She’s known Spinnerella for two decades at the most.

Twenty years, compared to the _hundred_ that Catra spent alone with Adora. It just doesn’t stack up.

“I’d like to be done talking now,” Catra says quietly. Netossa looks puzzled by her abrupt shift in attitude, but she nods, turning instead to the papers on her desk. Catra stares at nothing and sips her hot chocolate as they sit in silence. The clock on the wall ticks, just barely audible. Catra drains her drink, sets the cup on the desk, and leans her head back against the back of the chair.

She’s been dozing only a few minutes when Netossa’s distant voice says, “Catra? Angella’s here. It’s time to go home now.”

Catra blinks her eyes open again. Her vision is blurry with unsatisfied exhaustion. When she lifts her head, she gets dizzy for a moment, the room swimming around her. It takes her a moment to regain her bearings and remember that she’s not trapped in that house anymore, that she’s _alive_ and _breathing_ and sitting in a police station instead of finding her way back to Adora.

“Sorry,” Catra says, getting slowly to her feet. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” She turns towards the source of Netossa’s voice, and freezes in place when she sees Angella standing there, too.

Angella looks…Catra wants to call it anger, but she doesn’t know Angella well enough to make that assumption. Still, the hard set of her jaw, the sharp look in her eyes, and the air of _coldness_ she exudes sends a flood of adrenaline into Catra’s veins. Her instincts, honed by a century of being hunted, are telling her to run.

“Hello,” Catra says instead. Angella just sighs.

“The car is outside,” she says. “We should go. It’s already late, and I’d like to get home as fast as possible.” Her tone brooks no argument, not that Catra would have one regardless. She just nods, unwrapping the blanket from herself and handing it to Netossa. It’s much colder in the police station without it. Netossa takes it with a kind smile and tucks it under one arm.

“Stay safe,” Netossa says as Catra steps past her. “No more late night walks without shoes on, understand?”

“I understand,” Catra says. She’s pretty sure Netossa is trying to be funny. She’s too focused on Angella to laugh. She’s waiting for the familiar sight of angry red lightning. Knowing that it isn’t coming doesn’t help one bit.

Angella leads her through the main room of the police station without a word. Catra follows behind her, practically in her footsteps, trying to blame the way she’s shaking on the residual cold. She can’t even convince herself of that.

Out the front doors, the air outside feels twice as cold as before. Catra wraps her arms around herself and tries not to tremble any harder. She wonders if she’ll ever be warm again. Not as warm, certainly, as she was in Adora’s arms, with both of them _alive_.

Angella turns the car on as Catra is buckling her seatbelt. It roars to life, making Catra jump a little. She’s _severely_ unused to cars, and her sleepiness is making it difficult to keep track of what’s happening around her. Immediately after the car starts, though, heat begins to pour out of the vents in the dashboard, and Catra leans forward in her seat to press her hands against the streams of warm air.

“You can’t wander off like that,” Angella says as she pulls the car onto the road. “Especially at night.”

“ _Can’t_?” Catra asks. Angella shoots her a glance, and that firm, cold expression is still on her face.

“ _Can’t_ ,” she repeats. Catra doesn’t like that one bit.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she says. Angella lets out an aggravated sigh.

“I am trying to _help_ you, Catra,” she says.

“I didn’t ask you to!” The words come out sharper than Catra intends them—less forceful, and more _scared_. “I didn’t ask for your help. I’m not your burden.”

“You may not have asked, but you _need_ help,” Angella says. “I’m not going to refuse it to you, even if you’re too stubborn to ask for it.”

“Fine!” Catra says. “If you want to help me, abandon me! Let me out and leave me behind! _That_ will help.” Angella shakes her head.

“I won’t help you put yourself in danger,” she says.

“Why _not_?” Catra is, to her own horror, beginning to cry. “It’s what I want!”

“It would be wrong.” Angella slows the car to a stop at an intersection and turns to look at Catra. That cold exterior is still present, but Catra can see through it now. The emotion it’s masking isn’t anger. It’s worry. “You could get hurt, or die. Adora wouldn’t want that, and I don’t want that on my conscience. Keeping you safe is the right thing to do, even if it isn’t what you want right now.”

“I can see why Adora liked you people so much,” Catra says, looking away. “You’re just like her. Worrying about what’s _right_.” It’s absurd. Why should Catra care about _right_? What is _right_ after a century where the only thing that mattered was Adora? If _the right thing_ doesn’t include Catra and Adora staying together, then Catra has no use for it.

“What will you do to me for all this?” Catra says, after a long few moments of Angella driving in silence. “The running away, and the yelling?” Whatever passes for discipline these days, it can’t be nearly as bad as Ms. Weaver’s lightning.

“Do to…” Angella glances at Catra and frowns. “Do _to_ you? I’m not going to do anything. I just don’t want you to run away again.”

“I would appreciate if you just told me,” Catra says. “I hate surprises.”

“Catra, I promise you, I’m not going to do anything,” Angella says. “I don’t know what your life was like wherever you were before, but I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m not going to punish you for acting out because you’re in pain.” Catra is rendered speechless. No one has ever cut to the heart of it like that before. Not even Adora.

When Catra used to make things difficult for herself by talking back to Ms. Weaver, Adora would treat her wounds and ask her gently to be more careful, more respectful. She didn’t _see_ , didn’t understand why Catra would provoke their guardian when it only made things worse. There would be so much pain regardless of what Catra did. It had to go _somewhere_ , and anger was the easiest place to put it—far easier than trying to hold it in herself forever.

Adora had never understood, and maybe that’s because Catra had never tried to explain it to her, but Angella has seen straight through to the truth.

“How much do you know about Adora and I?” Catra asks. “Where we come from?” She isn’t sure what Angella had managed to get out of Glimmer earlier.

“Not as much as I’d like to,” Angella says. “Glimmer was less than forthcoming. Are you planning on enlightening me?” Catra hesitates. She wants to ask more, but there’s little she can say without revealing the _fear_ that she lived and died under, and that feels like too much to say to a woman she’s just met.

“Ask your daughter,” Catra says, and turns her head to look out the window.

“I think I will,” Angella says, and she doesn’t speak again the whole drive back to the house.

Catra returns to the guest room when they get back. She latches the window that she had left unlocked and crawls under the covers of the bed. It’s warm beneath the blankets, and she pulls them up, halfway over her face and hair. It’s almost enough to make her feel warm down to her bones again, almost enough to drive out the cold that itches far beneath her skin. Almost.

Catra sleeps fitfully for the first time in a hundred years.

* * *

The room is filled with steam when Catra gets out of the shower. She wants to appreciate the thing; she had hated taking baths in her…last life, or old life, or whatever she should be calling the years she spent alive before. Sitting in a cooling, stagnant pool of her own grime was not something she found enjoyable. Showers do away with all of that: the water moves, and drains, and there seems to be an endless supply of hot water.

Catra has a hard time enjoying any of it. She had a hard time enjoying the breakfast Micah had cooked for her, either, or the coffee that had come with it. She thinks she may have lost the ability to enjoy anything at all. Maybe, when Adora brought her back, she forgot to bargain for the part of Catra that _feels_.

Catra wipes at the steam on the full-length mirror in the bathroom. It vanishes beneath her fingertips, allowing her to see herself clearly. There are deep, dark circles beneath her eyes, adding to her gaunt, almost skeletal appearance and emphasizing the sharpness of her cheekbones. Her cheeks are hollow, her jaw pointed. She had never realized how _thin_ she is; Ms. Weaver had never fed her enough a day in her life, but she had very little to compare herself to, given how concealing the clothing of her time was. Now, compared to Bow or Glimmer, or the brief glimpses Catra had gotten of Adora, she looks _sick_.

Her hair doesn’t help the image, either. It’s always completely unmanageable when it’s wet—another reason Catra had always hated baths, and unfortunately one that showers can’t solve—and it falls in a long, dense mass over her shoulders, drawing attention to how narrow they are, how small her frame truly is.

Suddenly, Catra _hates_ it. If she were to climb back into her dress, she would look exactly as she had when she died: small and scared and tired and—and _powerless_. She would be indistinguishable from the version of herself that got her and Adora killed.

Catra finds a pair of scissors in the bathroom drawer, and goes at her hair with a vengeance. She doesn’t look at the mirror as she cuts. It isn’t about looking good. It’s about making herself _feel_ something other than dull anger.

She had _wasted_ so much time the first time she was alive. She had cleaned, and cooked, and toiled away her entire life following Ms. Weaver’s rules, just hoping to survive with a few less scars on her back. Death had almost been a blessing. She could scream and swear and let all of the anger in her chest out at Shadow Weaver, and Adora would be there to protect her from the consequences.

And now she’s alive, and there’s rules again, about where she can go and when and whether or not she’s allowed to die, and it’s _all Adora’s fault_ and Catra can’t even be angry with her. She just wants her _back_.

Catra drops the scissors back to the counter with a clatter and looks at herself in the mirror. Her hair looks like shit. It’s choppy and uneven, falling past her ears in waves too short to have any hope of tying back. Her face looks no healthier, and her eyes look no less empty.

Catra has to step over piles of her hair on the floor to dress herself. She’s made a mess. The thought sparks anxiety in her chest, but she stubbornly pushes it down. She can clean up before anyone gets home; she can avoid getting in trouble for this.

Catra steps out of the bathroom and almost directly into Glimmer.

“Whoa,” Glimmer says, taking a step back. Her eyes go a bit wide. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?” Catra tries to think of something snarky to say, something abrasive enough to make Glimmer leave her alone. She comes up empty. She can’t find enough anger in her chest to throw at Glimmer.

“I got upset,” Catra admits instead, and the surprised look on Glimmer’s face fades into something like _understanding_.

“Right,” she says. “I’ve been there. We can go get it fixed up by an actual professional if you want. There’s a few barbershops that take walk ins. No offense, but it kinda looks like shit.” It’s direct enough to almost make Catra smile.

“I need to clean up first,” she says. “The bathroom is…” She gestures vaguely over her shoulder where she’s left the light on. She doesn’t feel the need to hide her mess from Glimmer, for some reason. She supposes Glimmer could tell Angella and get Catra in trouble, but she just doesn’t feel like she will. Glimmer had sounded sincere when she said _I’ve been there_.

“There should be a broom and dustpan in the bathroom closet,” Glimmer says. Catra steps back into the bathroom, but Glimmer darts in front of her, making it to the closet first. “I’ll clean it up,” she says, turning to face Catra. Catra blinks at her.

“It’s my mess,” she says. Ms. Weaver had always been after her to _take responsibility_ for things. For her chores, for her appearance, for the way she had been a _bad influence_ on Adora. It feels _wrong_ to let Glimmer clean up after her.

“Yeah, and normally I wouldn’t help you with it,” Glimmer says as she turns back around to dig through the closet. “It’s not my problem. But if you’re upset enough to chop your hair off, you’re too upset to clean.” Catra is stunned into honesty, again. Both Glimmer and Bow seem to be good at that: acting so _strangely_ that Catra can’t think of a thing to say other than her genuine thoughts.

“Thank you,” she says, and surprises herself with the _sincerity_ in her voice. Glimmer, who is already kneeling down to start sweeping, shoots her a curious look.

“It isn’t a big deal,” she says. It _is_ , though, and Catra has to take a moment to articulate why.

“Nobody has ever…done things for me,” she says. “Other than Adora, I mean.” It’s doubly true for housework. That had been her whole _life_ with Ms. Weaver, after all: cleaning up after someone else. Even Adora couldn’t help Catra with it often; they would get in trouble if Ms. Weaver found out, hence the lectures and punishments Catra received about responsibility.

“You lived with Ms. Weaver your whole life, right?” Glimmer says. Catra nods. “And she’s, like, a _bitch_. So, y’know, it’s not surprising that it’s never happened before, but most people help each other.”

“…I suppose.” Catra isn’t sure she believes that. The world she had known had been brutal. She doesn’t imagine the nature of humanity has changed in the past hundred years. Glimmer and Bow are outliers, anomalies who would risk their lives to help two ghosts. The best kind of fools.

“I’ll text Bow and see if he feels like driving us to a barbershop,” Glimmer says, straightening up off the floor with a dustpan full of Catra’s hair. She eyes Catra for a moment, then says, “It’s gonna be pretty short if you want it to look good. The front is…” She makes a face, and Catra sighs. She knows what it looks like.

“That’s fine,” she says. It really isn’t. She had liked her hair. She hadn’t meant to ruin it. She had just…gotten upset.

She wishes she cared to stay alive long enough for it to grow back.

* * *

Catra has been told very clearly to not return to the house on the hill, to not run away again, to not risk her life. The day after she gets her haircut, she waits until Glimmer’s house is empty, laces up her borrowed boots, and sets off down the street in the general direction of the hill.

It’s a much nicer walk in the warmth of daylight, with shoes on and a jacket wrapped around her. Her ears are a bit cold with her new, shorter haircut, but it isn’t enough to deter her, and this time, none of the cars passing by on the street stop beside her. Nobody gets in her way. The few people she sees out on the street don’t bother giving her a second glance.

It’s a bit difficult to find her way to the road up the hill. She can barely remember what Bright Moon looked like before, and everything has changed since the last time Catra was in town, over a century ago. Still, the hill protrudes from the land outside of town fairly clearly, and not many roads lead in its general direction, so Catra only takes a few wrong turns before she’s climbing up towards it along a road that’s half dirt, half muddy snow. She’s really glad she has shoes on this time.

The climb goes quickly. Catra’s heart begins to pound. It had raced the other night, on the way out of the house and away from the patch of dust that had been Adora’s body, but Catra had other things to worry about at the time. She hadn’t paid attention to the sensation. Now, though, with her feet falling monotonously and the house still a ways off in the distance, she has nothing else to think about at all except the loud, heavy pounding in her chest.

She finds the sensation sickening. It aches in her chest and echoes in her ears, and it seems to climb its way out of her ribcage and into her throat, coating it in something sticky that drags against the air as she breathes. It’s a horrible feeling, one that she had long since forgotten, one that she would like to forget once again.

When she was dead, things could hurt. But they couldn’t feel this _real_. Pain, sadness, love; she felt all of it at a distance. Through a layer of distortion. Now, she hurts with her body—and loves with it, too. Beneath the ache in her chest from the climb is the ache that has been there for days now, the pain of reaching out for Adora and finding nothing at all.

Catra misses the numbness.

She steps off the road when she reaches the end of the tire tracks she’s been following, right beneath the house. They’re the only set on the road, and she assumes they belong to Bow’s car from days before. It’s not as if anyone comes out this way—they hadn’t in 1910, and they don’t now. There’s nothing out here except the house, and no one in their right mind would come out here for that.

Catra walks through the trees beside the road. The forest is smaller than she remembers it being a few nights ago, and it isn’t long before she steps out into the empty field that surrounds the house. Nothing grows on it. The trees stop entirely, and there aren’t even remnants of dead grass beneath the patchy snow. Just dirt, dead and cold.

It’s wholly unsurprising to Catra. She imagines it’s an extension of whatever magic has preserved the house. It should’ve long since been infested with vermin, torn down by the state, _something_. But something has kept every living thing out for over a century, except for a few very unfortunate humans, and apparently, that force extends into the ground around it for several hundred yards.

Catra isn’t sure whose power it is that’s kept the house undisturbed—Adora’s, or Shadow Weaver’s, or something Ms. Weaver herself did before the things she summoned fused with her soul. It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing Adora’s powers _should_ do. Her power is light, kind, and apparently _literally_ made of love. Drawing a line in the dirt to keep life out is antithetical to a magic so based in it—or at least, Catra assumes. She really doesn’t know much about magic.

But perhaps Catra is looking at this the wrong way. Perhaps the line isn’t to keep the life out, but to keep the death _in_. Who knows how many more living things Shadow Weaver might’ve killed if the house wasn’t so thoroughly isolated? The line could be an act of mercy, of _kindness_ , and Adora has always been very good at that.

When Catra climbs the front porch, she realizes that the front door of the house is open.

They must’ve left it that way, the other night when they left. Bow and Glimmer had been focused on running, and Catra had already been thinking of a way to return to the house. It had been difficult to manipulate objects as a spirit; Catra isn’t surprised that Adora hasn’t bothered closing it. If she’s still around, that is. If her form now even remotely resembles what they were before.

Still, looking through the open door and into the gloom of the inside of the house makes Catra shiver. It’s _dark_ in there. Somehow, in a few short days, Catra has grown used to the daylight.

Catra has barely crossed the threshold when a figure appears in front of her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Adora says. Her voice rings clear through the entryway—quiet, but unmarred by the difference in their forms, without any distortion. She’s dressed in the same clothes she was wearing when she died, and Catra, to her shock, can see her _face_. The line of Adora’s jaw, the blue of her eyes, the worried furrow of her brow; Catra can see every detail perfectly. Adora is not the blurred mass of color she had been to Catra for so long. She’s _real_ , vibrant, clearly visible and deceptively solid-looking.

But if Catra focuses hard enough, she can see the wall through Adora’s chest.

“You look…” Catra shakes her head, throat closing up. “Can you hear me? See me?” Adora closes her eyes for a moment, taking a deep, useless breath, and Catra sees her jaw tremble slightly.

“I can,” Adora says. “It’s different this time. _I’m_ different. I’m not sure why. I think I’m—I’m more dead than I was before, maybe. Not as caught between dimensions. But that’s not the point, Catra. You need to _leave_.”

“No.” Catra shakes her head. “I’m not going.” She takes a step forward, unconsciously reaching out for Adora. She just looks so _real_ , standing there, and if Catra doesn’t look through her it’s like she’s _alive_ , no matter if Adora thinks she’s _more_ dead than before.

“You have to,” Adora says. “I…love that I’ve seen you, I—thank you, for giving me that. But you can’t be here. Shadow Weaver is…” Adora closes her eyes again, takes another breath, and a sense of dread settles over Catra as she finally recognizes the mannerism, traces it back a hundred years to the last time they needed things like blinking and breathing. Adora had done this, breathed evenly and carefully like she’s timing every inhale, on the rare occasions when Ms. Weaver would turn her powers from Catra to Adora. Catra would clean the lightning burns on Adora’s skin, and Adora would breathe deeply, evenly the whole time, almost like she was trying to lull herself to sleep. And she’s doing it right now, despite the fact that her lungs no longer need air, that breathing as a spirit feels strange and empty and unsettling.

Adora is in pain.

“She’s worse,” Adora says, opening her eyes. “She’s worse than she used to be. And even if she wasn’t, it would be too dangerous for you to be here. You have to go.”

“No,” Catra says again. “I’m staying. And if—if you can’t accept that, I’ll come here every day until you do.”

“ _No_.” Adora’s voice cracks, and it makes Catra flinch. “You can’t do that, Catra. You can’t. I won’t let you die, and I won’t let you waste your life on—on me. You have to _live_. That’s what I died for, Catra.” Catra flinches again at the word _died_ , takes a step back towards the threshold. “I’m—I’m sorry I took so long out there. I’m sorry I was selfish. I took much time. But I _did_ it, Catra. I saved you. You’re alive. And you have to—you have to take your second chance. Or I died for nothing.”

“I didn’t ask you to save me,” Catra whispers. “I didn’t _ask_.”

“I—“ Adora takes a gasping breath, and to her horror, Catra sees tears on her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. It’s done. And you can’t waste your life on a ghost. I’m _gone_.”

“No.” Catra shakes her head roughly, gritting her teeth. “You’re not. You’re not gone.” She takes a step forwards, hands flying out before she can stop herself. “You’re right here.” Her hands slip straight through Adora’s shoulders and into the air behind her.

Adora opens her mouth, then closes it again. Their faces are close together now. Catra can see the watery sadness in Adora’s eyes. She can see straight through it to the wall on the other side of the room.

The hallway beside them lights up with a dark, purple-ish red. Adora whirls to face it, hands already coming up, glowing with an impossibly bright white light.

“Go,” she says to Catra. Catra doesn’t have time to argue before Shadow Weaver appears in the hall. She’s no less terrifying for the sunlight coming in the windows, and in fact, maybe more so: in the daylight, with clear, living eyes, Catra can see every blackened vein in her former guardian’s face, the pale green hue that’s taken her skin, the red sludge that’s filled her hair where it floats aloft.

“ _Catra_ ,” Shadow Weaver says. “ _How nice of you to return_.” She raises her hands, and Catra is frozen in place, too transfixed to turn and run. Darkness pours from Shadow Weaver’s fingertips, flooding the hall. The light from the windows is obscured, and suddenly Catra can barely see.

“No!” It’s Adora’s voice. The hallway lights up. A wall of white light erects itself between Shadow Weaver and Catra, and when Catra blinks the spots from her vision, she finds Adora standing in front of her, hands raised, glowing brightly.

The darkness inches closer, pushing its way around the edges of the wall.

“You have to _go_ ,” Adora says, looking over her shoulder at Catra. Catra shakes her head. “You have to, Catra, I can’t hold her back for long. Please, _run_.”

“I don’t want to leave you,” Catra says. Adora opens her mouth to speak, but only lets out a pained groan. The barrier of light is almost gone now, the darkness pressing down against it from all available angles. Catra squints at it, and realizes that the darkness is lined with red light—not just red light, red _lightning_. And, where Adora’s hands are pressed against the magic, the lightning is crackling over her skin.

“ _Go_ ,” Adora says again, and this time, it comes out with a weight to it.

Invisible arms wrap around Catra’s waist waist. She lets out a surprised noise as her feet lift off the floor, and it’s barely come out of her mouth before she’s _thrown_ out the door. She flies out over the porch and nearly fifteen feet across the field before she hits the ground, and maybe it’s Adora’s powers keeping the land clear after all, because the impact doesn’t hurt. It’s as if the earth _catches_ her. Catra can’t imagine anyone other than Adora commanding the world to treat her with such kindness.

Catra scrambles to her feet, but the front door to the house has already slammed shut. Without approaching it, Catra knows that Adora won’t let her back in. She can’t hold the door forever, of course; Catra can come back in a day, maybe a week, and she’ll be able to enter the house again, see Adora again, be told again that she’s wasting the life Adora died to give her.

For now, Catra sits down in the dirt and cries. Up the hill from her, red and white light flash in the windows of the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...yeah. yeah.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan and on twitter @sevens_evan if you wanna keep up with me + hear abt my projects as i'm working on them. i post a lot of sneak peeks and work notes for my fics on tumblr so i would say that's definitely the more interesting place to follow me, but i do use twitter as well.
> 
> please leave a comment if you liked the chapter!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is pretty much the only chapter of this fic that was like, genuinely difficult for me to write because of its content. having reread it for editing, it isn't that bad. it's actually probably less dark than last chapter because i'm not writing from the perspective of a character who's suicidal, but it is Rough. it was difficult for me specifically because i've struggled with anxiety for a long time and trying to recreate those experiences in writing was a pretty exhausting task. that said, i'm also really proud of it. i like this chapter a lot. just be warned that there are in-depth descriptions of anxiety and a panic attack, and also what i'm fairly sure is dissociation (i was just pulling on my own experiences, but having written it, i think i've been dealing with dissociation for years! fun!). so take care of yourselves, read slow, take breaks if you need to.
> 
> enjoy.

“There she is,” Glimmer says quietly. Bow pulls the car to a stop on the side of the dirt road and looks over, out Glimmer’s window on the passenger side. Sure enough, up beyond the trees, sitting in the field beneath the house on the hill, is a figure with short brown hair. Bow can’t make out more details from this distance, but there’s no one it _could_ be other than Catra.

“How did you know she would be up here?” Bow asks, looking at Glimmer. Glimmer shrugs.

“She tried the other night,” she says. “Makes sense she’d come back. Besides, where else would she go? The only thing she ever talks about is Adora.”

“Yeah.” Bow sighs, slumping in his car seat. His head is pounding. He hasn’t gotten enough sleep since before—since _before_ , and the stress of Catra running away every time they turn their backs isn’t helping.

“Can you talk to her?” Glimmer says. Bow glances up at her.

“You’ve spent more time with her,” he says. “You know her better.” He just doesn’t want it to be on _him_ , this time. He doesn’t even have the energy to keep _himself_ stable; he can’t fix Catra, too.

“That’s exactly why it should be you,” Glimmer says. “She’s really fragile, Bow, and you’re a lot better at being nice than I am.” Bow sighs again and closes his eyes.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.” He opens his eyes, climbs out of the car, and starts the walk up the hill.

It feels shorter in daylight. It doesn’t feel like the trees are shifting around him, and he breaks out of the tree line when he expects to, without the feeling that space has stretched itself to make the walk longer. He wonders, suddenly, why they’re always coming up here at night. Magic might be easier at night, but Glimmer’s magic is plenty strong regardless, and it’s doing his heart rate wonders to be able to see.

Bow crosses the dirt field, keeping his footfalls as heavy as he can without stomping, not wanting to surprise Catra with his presence. Eventually, he reaches her, and settles onto the ground beside her. He sees her bloodshot eyes flick over to him before returning to the house, and notes the tear stains on her cheeks. Catra doesn’t speak, so Bow follows her lead, sitting beside her in silence and staring up at the house.

He’s beginning to shiver when Catra says, “She wouldn’t let me die.” Bow turns to look at her, blinking, and it takes him a moment to connect the dots.

“Adora?” he asks quietly. “You saw her in there?” Catra nods.

“She threw me out,” she says. “She wouldn’t let me _die_.”

“Of course not,” Bow says softly. “She loved you more than anything. She wouldn’t—“

“ _Loved_?” Catra’s voice cracks. “Like it’s _over_? She’s dead, Bow, but she isn’t _gone_. She isn’t—“ Catra takes a deep breath. There are tears running down her face now. Bow’s chest hurts looking at her. “She saved me again,” Catra whispers. “She saved me. She’s not gone.”

“Yeah.” Bow looks back up at the house, wonders if Adora would appear to him, too, if he went in there. It’s…more tempting than he wants it to be. “I know how you feel, Catra. I—“

“You don’t know _anything_.” Catra spits the words out, and they make Bow flinch. “We were together for a _hundred and ten years_. You can’t possibly understand what I’ve lost.” Bow bites back the anger that’s trying to surge in response to Catra’s tone. Of _course_ he understands loss. He loved Adora, too.

“I can’t understand what it was like in there, for you,” he says instead, keeping his voice as soft as he can make it. He sounds more exhausted than kind, but it’s all he can muster, all the support he can give right now if he wants to keep himself together. “I can’t understand just how _long_ you guys were together. But I—Adora slept on my bedroom floor the whole time she was alive. Did you know that?” Catra shakes her head. “Yeah. And I haven’t been able to sleep for the last few nights, because—I mean, for a lot of reasons. But I keep listening for her breathing. I didn’t even realize I had been listening, since we brought her back. But I had. And now it’s too quiet, and I…don’t remember how to sleep in an empty room.” Catra finally looks away from the house, staring up at Bow with a carefully blank expression.

“You love her,” Bow says. “And she—she was yours, first. I get that. But I love her, too, and she’s—she was mine and Glimmer’s, too. We all lost her. So I understand.” Catra’s blank mask breaks, and Bow sees confusion, exhaustion, and more pain than a body her size should be able to hold before she looks away.

“That doesn’t make sense to me,” she says, looking back up to the house. “Loving or…being loved by people. More than one person. It was Adora and I alone for…” Catra shrugs. “And she won’t let me die.”

“Catra…” Bow pushes down the urge to hug her, knowing his touch likely wouldn’t be welcome. “I know how it feels to—to not want to be alive, but you can’t give in to that.” Bow feels Catra’s gaze return to him, but he keeps his eyes on the frozen ground in front of them, lacing his fingers together in his lap to keep his hands from shaking. “I was—really, really unhappy when I was younger. Like, couldn’t get out of bed, didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to _live_ kind of sad. If I had known there was a house I could walk into to kill myself, I would’ve, too.” He takes a deep breath.

“But I’m—I didn’t, and I’m really, really glad that I didn’t. Looking back, there is— _so much_ that I would’ve missed if I had died when I wanted to. Places I wouldn’t have gotten to go, experiences I wouldn’t have, books I wouldn’t have gotten to read. I wouldn’t have gotten to meet Adora.” He blinks back tears and looks over at Catra, who is staring at him with wide eyes. “I don’t understand loss the way you do,” he says. “But I understand hopelessness, and I know that it’s worth it to keep going. So just—don’t go back in there, okay?” He gestures towards the house. “Don’t hurt yourself. Let yourself live.” Catra stares up at him for a moment more, her expression blank and unchanging. Bow has no idea how much, if at all, his words have sunk in.

“I’ll stay away,” Catra says eventually, and Bow can’t suppress a sigh of relief. “For now, at least.” She looks away, suddenly seeming very small. “Can we go?” she asks. “I think I’d like to lie down for awhile.”

“Yeah.” Bow pushes himself to his feet and offers Catra a hand up. She doesn’t take it, standing up alone, and Bow sticks his hands in his pockets instead. As they start the walk back down the hill, he takes deep breaths, trying to soothe the anxiety in his chest. It doesn’t work. It seems to feed the feeling, instead, and panic flares up in his chest like the coals of a fire being blown on.

He starts to breathe more shallowly and ignores the burning feeling. He can’t break down right now, not with Glimmer waiting in the car and Catra only a few minutes past what was essentially a suicide attempt. His own feelings—about Adora, about Catra, about having to talk about his past—can wait.

* * *

“Are you gonna be okay?” Bow asks quietly, hovering in the doorway of Glimmer’s guest room—now Catra’s room, more or less. Catra looks over her shoulder at him, a dead look in her eyes.

“I’m going to get some sleep,” she says, rather than answering his question. Bow decides not to push it, and just nods before he slides the door shut.

“What did you guys talk about?” Glimmer asks from beside him. Bow glances down at her and shrugs. He doesn’t really want to rehash the conversation they’d had up on the hill, and he isn’t sure if Catra would want him to, either. She hadn’t volunteered the information to Glimmer; the car ride back to Glimmer’s house had been tense and silent after Catra gave the barest possible summary of her journey into the house.

“What about you?” Bow asks. Glimmer blinks at him. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I…” Glimmer sighs, and it comes out shaky. “Let’s go to my room.” She slips past him without waiting for an answer, and Bow follows her down the hallway to her bedroom. He closes the door behind them, turns to face Glimmer, and his heart drops.

“Glimmer,” he says softly. She shakes her head. She looks _destroyed_. The stressed-but-steady mask she’d been wearing since they stumbled out of that house without a friend has dropped, and in its wake, Bow sees the ache from his chest reflected in Glimmer’s eyes.

“I just—“ Glimmer’s voice cracks. Bow steps forward, pulling her into his arms. He knows that, with Glimmer at least, his touch is always welcome. It isn’t enough to comfort her, though. Glimmer buries her face in Bow’s shoulder, and within seconds, he can feel her tears seeping through his shirt.

“It’s okay,” Bow whispers, holding her tighter. “It’s okay.”

“It _isn’t_ ,” Glimmer says into his chest. “I can’t sleep, and Catra keeps running away, and Adora’s _gone_ , Bow, she’s—“

“I know.” Bow closes his eyes and rubs circles into Glimmer’s back, praying that it’s comforting and knowing that Glimmer likely doesn’t even notice the touch.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Glimmer whispers. “She just—she turned into _dust_. And she’s trapped again, with that _thing_ , and she doesn’t _deserve_ that, Bow. She doesn’t.”

“I know.” Bow opens his eyes, and is shocked to find them dry. The tears he should be shedding won’t come. There’s a familiar kind of numbness seeping through his body from his fingertips, dulling the sound of Glimmer’s pained gasps and deadening the fire in his chest. He recognizes the sensation. It’s the detachment that comes when he’s completely overwhelmed—a defense mechanism, a sweeping feeling of _nothing_ that protects him from reality, at least for a time.

The feeling will lift later, and Bow will feel everything like it’s new again, like a flash flood overflowing its banks.

Glimmer cries for awhile. Bow stands there and holds her as his own eyes stay dry and empty. He keeps tracing circles on her back, hoping that it helps, somehow. The repetitive movement keeps him grounded, prevents him from drifting away from this moment completely.

“Sorry,” Glimmer whispers eventually, and Bow puts every bit of his head and heart into refocusing his attention on the world around him. Glimmer needs him. He needs to be _present_. “Your shirt is, like, super gross now.”

“It’s okay,” Bow says. “I can wash it.” Glimmer takes a deep breath and steps back, out of Bow’s arms. Bow is searching for something to say when there’s a quiet knock on the door.

“Come in,” Glimmer says, raising her voice. Bow turns towards the door, expecting Catra, already searching his soul for the energy to try to offer comfort to someone who doesn’t want it.

Instead, the door opens to reveal Angella.

“Bow,” Angella says. “I saw your car in the driveway. Everything okay?” She glances at Glimmer, who has quite obviously been crying, though she doesn’t outright comment on it. Bow isn’t sure if it’s out of a sense of tact or a difficulty expressing concern.

“Not really,” Glimmer says, and Bow realizes that her voice is rough from crying. “I just—I miss Adora.” It’s definitely a simplification of the situation, and it firmly leaves out the fact that Catra ran away again. Angella wouldn’t be _mad_ , probably, but it might make Catra’s presence in the house a little more tense. Bow can’t blame Glimmer for skipping over it.

“Oh,” Angella says quietly. She steps farther into the room, exhaling slowly. “I’m sorry, Glimmer.” Glimmer just nods, picking at her fingernails. Bow’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and the room is so silent that the vibration is audible. He pulls it out and checks it, aware of Glimmer and Angella’s eyes on him.

“I, um.” Bow’s voice comes out rough, too, though he hasn’t shed a tear this whole time. “I should go home. My dads have been…kind of worried, lately, and they were expecting me home right after school.” They’ve already lost one member of their family this month. They haven’t said as much in words, but they’re a little paranoid about losing another.

“Of course,” Angella says.

“I’ll walk you out,” Glimmer says, stepping past her mother to stand at Bow’s side. “Catra’s sleeping, Mom. You probably shouldn’t wake her up.” Angella nods, and Glimmer grabs Bow’s hand, leading him out of the room. They walk to the front porch in silence. Bow’s fingers feel numb against Glimmer’s.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” Bow says as they step out the front door. He turns to look at Glimmer. The pain has left her expression, replaced by _exhaustion_.

“Yeah,” Glimmer whispers. Bow shifts his weight from one foot to the other. The moment feels unfinished, like he needs to say something else to make Glimmer smile again. But for the first time in their friendship, he doesn’t know what to say to Glimmer. He doesn’t know how to make any of this better.

“Okay,” he says. He uses their still-linked hands to tug Glimmer closer, pulling her into another hug. This one is a lot less desperate than their last. Glimmer sets her hands on his back, pressing lightly instead of clawing at him to be closer, and she breathes softly against his chest instead of crying into it. It doesn’t hurt any less.

Bow pulls back a little, far enough to duck his head and press a kiss to Glimmer’s forehead. Glimmer’s breath hitches slightly, but she leans into the contact, sighing as he pulls away.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment. Glimmer shakes her head.

“It’s not your fault,” she says. “Any of it. We’ll figure things out.” She doesn’t sound sure about that, and Bow is not convinced of it, either. But he nods anyway, reluctantly letting go of her and walking down the front porch steps.

Bow climbs into the driver’s seat of his Jeep, and suddenly he’s struck by an immense deja vu. He’d done this dozens of times over the past few months: sat in his car in Glimmer’s driveway, looking up at her on the front porch, waiting for Adora to climb out of the back and into the front seat, taking shotgun after they dropped Glimmer off.

The passenger’s seat stays empty and silent. Glimmer waves at him from the front porch, and Bow turns the car on and starts backing out of the driveway to drive home alone.

* * *

Bow gently kicks his bedroom door shut behind him. It swings closed with a click, and he exhales heavily, letting his head lull forwards and his shoulders drop. His fingertips are tingling now, instead of numb. The emptiness will be gone soon. The world will come back to haunt him. He normally hates the detachment, hates not _feeling_ things, but today, he wishes it would stay.

Bow drops his backpack in the corner and sits down on the edge of his bed. His gaze falls to the bedroom floor, and his heart drops when he sees the sleeping bag and pillow still set up there, waiting for Adora to return. He hasn’t had the time to clean it up, the past few days. But Adora isn’t returning. He really should put her things away.

Bow ignores that thought. He leaves the room for awhile, using the bathroom and splashing water on his face. He grabs a snack from the kitchen, leans against the counter while he eats and feels the tingling in his fingertips spreading. The ache in his chest will be back any minute now. His dads are still at work, Glimmer is busy with her own problems, and Adora—Adora is gone. There will be no one there to help him when it all comes rushing back.

Bow goes back upstairs in a daze. He doesn’t pay attention to what he’s doing, letting his feet guide him to his desk and his hands dig through his backpack, searching for the homework he’d gotten in calc today. His hands set it down in front of him, then move to the drawers of his desk, digging through them in search of a pencil.

Instead, he finds a sheet of lined paper. A rough edge marks where it was torn from a notebook, and it’s covered in handwriting that isn’t his: a cursive scrawl that Bow has to squint to decipher, and that Glimmer would have no hope of reading, if she were here. It’s Adora’s handwriting. At the top of the page, _Magical Aptitudes_ is written in large letters, underlined as a heading. Bow skims the notes, which are unorganized and seem almost as though they were written out of order. Despite that, each and every bullet point has a web address written at the end of it. Apparently, Adora had wanted to keep careful track of her sources, even if they are mostly obscure forum posts and defunct pagan websites from the 1990s. The part of Bow that was raised by two librarians feels a little spark of pride for her at the thought, but he shakes it off in favor of continuing to read.

The page mostly describes information that Bow himself had come across in his research over the past few months. Most people are capable of little spells, the kind that require candles and chanting and invocations of gods. Magic that pulls from the power of the universe, not the power within oneself. People with more potential— _like Glimmer_ , Adora notes in her looping handwriting, and Bow has to take a moment to decipher the uppercase G—can do larger spells with less: moving objects with their minds, controlling the elements, and a long list of other examples Adora had copied down. Bow skims past them. He’s read a dozen lists just like this one online.

The last section of the page finally holds something Bow doesn’t recognize. It talks about people born without a limit to their magic, people for whom magic is second nature, a kind of sixth sense or instinct, people who can do just about anything without even a spell book to guide them—so long as they’ve figured out how to access their powers. In the margins, Adora had written _Me?_ , the question mark looping down below the bottom of the word.

Bow sets the paper back in the desk drawer and closes it. Adora had figured it out, in the end. _It’s love_ , she had said the other night, in the few minutes they’d had when all four of them had been breathing. _That’s all my power is_. That must’ve been the trigger for her magic, and maybe the reason that Catra could pull on it, too, from miles and dimensions away.

Bow gets up from his desk. There’s no way he can do _homework_ right now, no _reason_ to do it when the universe is made of magic and there’s a house in town filled with spirits and his friend is dead.

His body takes itself over again. His hands pick up the clothes Adora had left lying around the room—a hoodie, a flannel, a jacket, some jeans. He has no idea how they all ended up here; his fathers had cleared out one of his sibling’s rooms for Adora about a month into her stay, and though both Bow and Adora had agreed that she would still sleep on his floor, she had moved her clothes into the closet in the room down the hall.

Bow’s arms pile the laundry into the hamper in the corner, and set the jacket on his bed to be moved to Adora’s closet later. They move onto the pillow and the sleeping bag next. He watches from inside his head as his hands strip off the pillowcase and toss it into the laundry, roll up the sleeping bag and force it back into its storage sack. He tucks the pillow under one arm and picks up the sleeping bag and jacket, wandering out of his room and down the hall. The jacket returns to Adora’s wardrobe; the pillow and sleeping bag find their place in the small storage closet near the bathroom. He slips back down the hall and into his room, closing the door behind him and leaning against it, surveying the empty room.

That’s what finally breaks the numbness. The burning returns to the inside of his chest as he stares down at the floor. At the nothing where Adora once was, the empty space with nothing to fill it anymore.

Bow tries to take a breath and finds that he can’t breathe.

He stumbles forward, away from the door, aims for the bed and misses. He slumps onto the floor instead, barely stopping himself from collapsing entirely. He gasps, feels his lungs inflate, chokes as they seem to fill with nothing instead of air.

He sits like that forever, trying and failing to breathe, and wonders if this is what Adora feels like, wherever she is now. If death is just a panic attack, trying and trying and trying and _failing_ to breathe.

The door to his bedroom opens. Vaguely, Bow registers the sound, but he can’t make himself turn his head to see who’s there. He just sucks in another whining breath, feeding the fire in his chest.

“Bow.” It’s Lance’s voice, calm and steady. There’s a distant sound of movement, and then his face is floating in Bow’s field of vision, looking at him through thick glasses with wide, concerned eyes. “Bow, can you talk right now?” Bow tries.

“I…” His breath whistles in his throat. His voice is barely a whisper. “I…” He shakes his head.

“That’s okay,” Lance says. “I’m going to touch your hand, okay?” Bow nods. A moment later, a hand slips into his, large and soft and warm. It squeezes gently. “Can you feel that?” Lance says. Bow nods again. “Focus on that, alright? Just focus on that.” Bow does his best. He tries to zero in on the sensation of his father’s touch, instead of the horrible burning tightness in his chest. It half-works. The ache subsides a bit.

“Lance?” a voice from the hallway calls. Bow manages to turn his head this time, just far enough to see George standing in the doorway, a look of worry on his face that’s identical to Lance’s.

Bow raises a hand, reaching out to him. George responds immediately, stepping into the room and dropping to his knees beside Bow. He takes Bow’s other hand, squeezing it tight, and Bow focuses on that, too, trying to pull his mind back to reality.

“You’re breathing too fast,”Lance says, his voice still impossibly calm. “Can you take a breath with me? Slowly?” Bow nods, though he isn’t sure if he really can. Lance inhales slowly, audibly, and Bow tries to mirror him. His breath comes jerkily and sharp, but it comes. He holds it until Lance begins to breathe out, and Bow follows suit in a controlled rush.

They breath together for a long time, or at least it feels long to Bow. His heart is pounding in his chest, and he’s lightheaded, but he can breathe again, and with a silent nod, he tugs his hands free of his fathers’ and replaces them at his sides.

Bow leans his head back against the side of his bed and closes his eyes. His breathing is still shaky, and he counts the seconds of his inhales until his heart begins to slow. He raises his hands to rub at his face, and is surprised when they come away wet. He hadn’t even realized he was crying.

“Hey,” Lance says quietly. Bow lowers his hands back to his lap and lets his exhausted gaze fall to his father’s, unable to summon even a veneer of stability. “What happened?” Lance asks gently. “You haven’t had an attack that bad in a long time.” Bow just shakes his head.

“I miss her,” he whispers. His voice is hoarse, and his throat is growing tight again, but it’s with regular tears this time, not adrenaline and terror. “I miss her. I—“ He shakes his head. The tears begin to fall, and Lance leans forward, wrapping him in a hug. George joins a moment later, holding them both tight.

Wrapped up in his fathers’ arms, Bow can’t stop himself anymore. He cries for Adora.

* * *

Bow turns his car off and stares up at Glimmer’s house through the windshield. It’s as familiar as it’s been his whole life. It’s basically his second home at this point. And yet, today, it looms above him in a way that makes him shiver with nervousness—although maybe that has less to do with the house and more to do with what he came here to say.

He had come to a conclusion, after his panic attack earlier this week. He’s been doing the same thing he always does: trying to take responsibility for his friends, their health, their happiness. He’s been putting everyone in front of himself again, and it had—predictably—backfired.

So he’s decided that he _can’t_ do this, anymore. He can’t hold Glimmer without crying himself, and he can’t cut out pieces of his past to show to Catra in hopes that they help her somehow. He can’t go numb and hide from his feelings in some distant corner of his head. He can’t keep those feelings _in_ anymore; he can’t walk around while his body fills up with fires and sharp edges and not tell anyone about it.

So he’s here to tell the truth. And that starts with Glimmer.

Bow slips out of his car and up the front porch steps. He lets himself into the house—it’s unlocked, and no one is surprised by him showing up out of the blue anymore. He kicks his shoes off in the entryway and heads down the hall to the living room, heart racing in his chest.

Catra is sitting on the couch, absently flicking through channels on the television. Bow pauses, hovers in the entryway, and her eyes glance up at him, but she says nothing, returning her gaze to the TV. Bow watches her for a moment. Her body is limp against the couch cushions, her eyes half-shut while the cooking show host on TV chatters on at a low volume. Bow doesn’t see anything but trouble in the posture. It speaks of lethargy, apathy.

Bow steps into the room and realizes that he has things to say to Catra, too.

“How are you doing?” he says, pausing at the end of the couch. Catra shrugs with one shoulder.

“Hungry,” she says. “But only because of the show.” Bow glances at the TV screen, makes a face at the sight of raw meat.

“And everywhere other than your stomach?” he says, looking back down at Catra. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t want to talk about this, Bow.” Catra doesn’t raise her eyes from the TV, and her tone is final. Bow feels a jolt of anger in his chest. He steps across the room and hits the power button on the back of the monitor. The screen goes dark, and he looks back at Catra. She looks vaguely irritated, but says nothing.

“You don’t have to talk to me,” Bow says, stepping in front of the dark screen and putting himself directly into Catra’s line of sight. “I can’t make you, and I don’t want to make you. But I need you to give me some kind of indication that you’re not going to run away back to the house at the first chance you get.” Catra’s eyes drop to her lap.

“And what would it matter if I did?” she asks. Bow lets out an aggravated noise that’s closer to a growl than a word.

“It matters because I started all of this shit,” he says. The words come out _angry_ , and that’s enough to get Catra to look at him again, eyes widened slightly. “I investigated the house, it was my idea to bring Adora back, I wasn’t smart enough to stop her from dying for you. You being alive is on me, and that fucking _sucks_ , because I can’t keep you alive if you don’t want to be. Okay? I can’t. I _can’t_. I…” He takes a deep, shaky breath. His anger has turned into tears, white-hot fire in his jaw transforming into a burning film in his eyes that he has to blink back to keep from crying openly.

“I am not your problem,” Catra says quietly. Bow laughs.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s the thing, though. You are, whether you want to be or not. So I need to know how you’re feeling, or _something_ to prove that you’re—staying. Because I have my own shit to work through, here. Okay? I lost a friend, and I need to _deal_ with that, and I can’t do that if I’m trying to keep an eye on you.” Catra says nothing, and Bow summons the last of his anger, forcing out through his voice. “All of this affects a lot more people than just you,” he says, and the words come out tired, instead of angry. “So _you_ have to pay attention to more than just yourself.” He goes silent, one of the fires in his chest finally put out. Catra stares up at him, an odd expression on her face—eyes wide, brow furrowed, frowning—and for the first time, Bow feels like she’s actually _heard_ him. All of his kindness and openness on the hill hadn’t made nearly as big of an impact on Catra as this: two minutes of honest anger, of _demands_ instead of suggestions. Bow doesn’t know what to think of that.

“I feel…” Catra’s voice is rough. She’s looking down at her lap again, at her palms where her hands are resting on her knees. “Helpless,” she says. “Adora is _suffering_ in there, and I can’t do a thing.” She half-laughs bitterly. “That’s almost worse than the _missing_.” Cautiously, Bow crosses the room. He settles down on the floor, some instinct telling him that sitting _beside_ Catra would be too much for this moment, and he puts his back against the front of the couch, turning his head to look up at Catra. He wants to say he _understands_ , he feels that helplessness, too, but he keeps his mouth shut and lets Catra talk herself through her feelings, instead.

“I didn’t know it was possible to miss someone like this,” Catra says, still talking to her lap. “I feel like something has been torn _out_ of me. We were together for so _long_. She’s as much a part of me as I am.” Catra closes her hands into fists. “I’m—I can’t decide. If I should live or die. She wants me to live, I know that. I want to be with _her_ , but she doesn’t want me. I don’t…” Catra shakes her head. “I can’t decide.” She falls silent, and Bow decides to risk speaking.

“Is there anything I can do?” he says. Catra finally looks over at him. “To help you decide?”

“I thought you didn’t want to have the responsibility of keeping me alive,” Catra says. Bow sighs.

“I don’t,” he says. “But I’m not really good at… _not_ helping. If I can do _something_ , as long as the whole thing isn’t on me…”

“I see.” Catra shifts, turning sideways on the couch to lie on her back. She tucks her arms her under her head and stares up at the ceiling, a contemplative look on her face. “I think…it might be easier to live with it if Adora wasn’t suffering,” she says after a moment. “I know what it’s like, alone in that house. Even with her magic, she must be in pain in there. And I can’t think of anyone in the world who deserves that less than she does.”

“Yeah.” Bow can understand that. It would be easier to cope with all of this if Adora was just _gone_ , wherever souls are supposed to go when their bodies decay, instead of a ghost floating around a house empty but for a monster for the rest of time.

“Do you think there’s any way we can help her?” Catra asks. “I know her—her body is gone, so we can’t do what you did the first time, but…”

“I don’t know.” Bow draws his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself. “And honestly, I haven’t let myself think about it.” Catra sits up, and Bow can see her frowning at him out of the corner of his eye.

“Why not?” she asks, voice sharp. Bow closes his eyes.

“Like I said,” he says, “I’m not good at not helping. I’m—I try to fix things. I always have. I try to help, even when it hurts me. Even when it makes things worse. I mean, you know that, right? I nearly got myself and Glimmer killed trying to bring back Adora. I _did_ get Adora killed trying to help her save you.” He opens his eyes, staring across the room at his reflection in the dark TV screen. The muddy reflection makes him look tired, ghostly, the bags under his eyes darker and heavier than they had been in the mirror that morning. “I’m really, really good at finding answers,” he says. “My dads are librarians, research is kind of their whole thing, and I’m _good_ at it. So if I started looking, I could probably find a way to help Adora. And I—I read about necromancy and stuff, when I was trying to figure out how to help you guys. That shit doesn’t _work_ , and it never leads anywhere good. But that’s where the research would lead, and I _know_ myself. I would try it. For her. And it would only make things worse.” He looks over at Catra. The first sparks of anger that had been appearing on her face when he admitted he hadn’t looked into ways to help Adora have faded.

“Once you get caught up on—well, everything,” he says, gesturing around the room. “Maybe I could teach you how to use the internet. You could look for a way to help her, and not fuck up like I would.” Catra doesn’t look convinced. “I _want_ to help her, Catra. I just—I don’t trust myself to do it right.”

“I don’t know that I trust myself, either,” Catra says quietly. Bow shrugs, deeply unsurprised by the answer.

“It’s up to you,” he says. “If it would help you be okay with—with staying alive, I think you should do it. But it’s up to you.”

“I’ll consider it,” Catra says. “I have a lot to learn about the world, first, though.” Bow nods, and pushes himself to his feet, sensing that the conversation is over.

“I’ll talk to Glimmer about getting you caught up,” he says, then pauses, a thought occurring to him. “Is she here?” Glimmer doesn’t really drive, but neither of her parents seem to be home, so she could be out with them.

“In her room, I think,” Catra says. There’s a _knowing_ tone in her voice, and Bow wonders just how transparent he must be that both Catra and Adora had picked up on his feelings for Glimmer so quickly.

“Thanks,” Bow says. “I’ll see you, Catra.” Catra nods, and Bow slips out of the room, headed for the staircase and Glimmer’s room at the top of it. His nerves are coming back rapidly, but his heartbeat stays steady in his chest. He’s ready for this, and more importantly, he _needs_ this. He needs Glimmer to know how he feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's that! felt like a fun place to end it aslkjdgha.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan and on twitter @sevens_evan if you wanna keep up with me! please leave a comment if you liked the chapter!!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this week it's glimmer's turn to be emotionally unstable. rereading this chapter for editing made me realize that i need to add a glimmer pov scene to the epilogue and do a lot of revision to chapter 11 so. i don't Currently think i'm gonna have to delay either of the last two chapters but if i do end up needing to i'll let y'all know over on tumblr and twitter.
> 
> uhhh idk if any warnings are really needed for this chapter, it's upsetting but less brutal than the last two so you guys should be okay. vague mentions of catra being suicidal but it isn't delved into the way it was before.
> 
> enjoy.

There’s a quiet knock at Glimmer’s door. She slips off her headphones, blinking in surprise. She hadn’t heard her parents get home. They should be out for another hour or so running errands—and it’s not as though the new, fourth occupant of the house speaks to her often, so Glimmer has no idea who might be at her door.

“Come in,” she says, setting her headphones on her desk. Her bedroom door opens, and Glimmer’s eyes widen when it reveals Bow. It isn’t _strange_ for him to show up at her house spontaneously, but they haven’t spoken much since she broke down in his arms earlier this week. They’d seen each other at school, of course, and sat together at lunch, but it had mostly consisted of holding hands across the table and staring at nothing in silence, trying to—at least on Glimmer’s part—avoid a repeat of the scene in the bedroom. So for him to show up here, now, with a kind of _determination_ on his face that Glimmer has never seen from him before? It’s surprising, and something about it makes Glimmer nervous.

“Hey,” Bow says.

“Hey.” Glimmer blinks at him, uncertain of where to go from here.

“Can I come in?” Bow asks. Glimmer nods, and Bow steps past her, sitting down on the edge of her bed. Glimmer turns her desk chair to face him, their knees brushing together.

“What’s up?” Glimmer asks quietly, after a long minute of silence. Bow sighs, staring down at his hands, and Glimmer, on an impulse, reaches out and takes one.

“I just…have a few things to say,” Bow says. Glimmer squeezes his hand, trying to encourage him, and Bow shoots her a small, soft smile. “After I went home the other day,” he says, and Glimmer needs no clarification to know which day he’s talking about, “I kind of…had a panic attack. A really bad one.” Glimmer’s grip on his hand tightens. “My dads helped,” Bow says, immediately noticing her concern. “I’m okay now. But it—it made me realize a few things. I’ve been…so focused on taking care of everyone else, you know? When we brought Adora back, I was always trying to help her, even when I—when it hurt me. I mean, I came out to her as, like, a teaching moment. That was a lot to deal with, and I…didn’t deal with it. And since—since we lost her, I’ve been focused on you and Catra. I didn’t let myself _hurt_ until I was hurting so much I couldn’t feel anything else.”

“I’m sorry,” Glimmer says, and Bow flinches.

“No, that isn’t—that isn’t what I meant.” He sighs. “It’s not your fault. I don’t want you to feel bad about leaning on me.” He releases her hand to rub at his face with both his palms. “I’m not explaining this right,” he says when he lowers his hands back to his lap, immediately grabbing Glimmer’s hand again in both of his own. “I’m trying to say that I’m working on it, on…helping myself, too. Y’know?” Glimmer nods, although she really doesn’t know what Bow is talking about at this point. “And that means sharing my feelings, even when it’s stuff I’m not proud of, or—or stuff that I’d rather keep to myself.”

“Bow,” Glimmer says. “Is everything okay?” She winces as soon as she asks the question. _Nothing_ is okay right now, and she knows it.

“Mostly,” Bow says. “I’m just—I’ve had a lot on my mind. Catra and Adora, they were, like, they cared about each other before they died. The first time, I mean. And they didn’t get the chance to do anything about it, right?” Glimmer nods, unsure how this is at all related to his first point. “That—that wasted time, I don’t want that to happen to me. To us.” He pauses, and Glimmer swears her heart stops in her chest. The dots are starting to connect in her head, but she isn’t quite sure she believes the picture they’re forming.

“Bow,” she says, her voice small.

“I just don’t wanna miss my chance,” Bow says. “If I have one. If you’ll have me.” Glimmer’s heart starts up again, pounding rapidly in her chest.

“Bow,” Glimmer says again. “Are you saying…” She can’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t want to guess wrong.

“I’m saying I think I’m in love with you,” Bow says, squeezing her hand in his. “I think I have been for a long time. And I just needed you to know that. I needed you to know.” Glimmer gets to her feet, pulling her hand free of Bow’s grasp. She sees panic in his eyes for half a second before she leans forward, their knees bumping together between them, and pulls him into a hug. He lets out a little gasp of surprise, and Glimmer leans down to bury her face in his shoulder, taking deep, shaky breaths. Her hands are trembling against his back.

“I love you, too,” she whispers. “I love you, too.” Bow’s arms tighten around her. They stay like that until Glimmer’s back starts to hurt from leaning over, and she finally, reluctantly, stands up. “We should, um.” Her vision is blurry, and she blinks rapidly to no avail. “We should talk about this. Right?”

“Yeah.” Bow is staring up at her, and he stares at her all the time, he always has, but it’s _different_ now. He isn’t holding anything back, and the full weight of his gaze, bare and open and _reverent_ , makes Glimmer shiver. “We should.”

“Okay.” Glimmer swallows hard and wishes her water bottle wasn’t empty. She isn’t _nervous_ , exactly. Bow doesn’t scare her—kind of the opposite. He’s always made her feel safe. But the idea of sitting down and being _honest_ about every feeling she’s kept to herself over the past few years is terrifying. “Should we—can we, like, cuddle or something? While we talk?”

“Yeah.” Bow half-smiles, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “C’mere.” He scoots back on the bed and stretches out. Glimmer climbs in beside him, tucking herself against his side. They’ve done this before, many times, and as Bow’s arm slips around her shoulders to pull her closer, Glimmer is pleased to find that it doesn’t feel any different with the truth out in the open between them.

* * *

“So I—I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Bow says softly. Glimmer nods, a little distracted by their joined hands hanging between them. They’re standing in the entryway of Glimmer’s house, where they have been for several minutes now. Neither of them wants Bow to leave. But they have homework—somehow, after everything, they still have _homework_ —and Bow’s fathers are still protective, still nervous about Bow being out and about.

“Tomorrow,” Glimmer echoes. Bow grins at her, then leans in. For a moment, Glimmer is sure he’s going to kiss her. Instead, he kisses her forehead, then steps back, dropping their hands.

“See you,” Bow says, and slips out the door. Glimmer is left frozen in the entryway, hands still slightly extended. The kiss hadn’t crossed any boundaries, hadn’t been any more intimate than contact they’ve shared in the past as friends, rather than…whatever they are now. But it had _felt_ different.

They hadn’t kissed in her room earlier. Glimmer isn’t sure what was holding Bow back, but for her part, she just didn’t have the nerve. And even if she had, it would feel… _wrong_ , somehow. To have that moment in a time that’s been so awful for them both, not to mention for Catra and Adora. It didn’t feel like they _should_ have that kind of happiness, right now.

Glimmer shakes the thought off and heads back up the hallway towards the living room. All their cards are on the table now, on both their parts. She and Bow are…are something. Something mutual, reciprocal. That’s enough for Glimmer, for now.

“That seemed intense,” Catra says from the couch as Glimmer reenters the living room. Glimmer blinks at her. She’d practically forgotten Catra was there—but she and Bow had passed by a few minutes ago, when they’d come down from Glimmer’s room.

“It was,” Glimmer says, then falls silent. If kissing Bow in the privacy of her room would’ve been wrongbecause of what Catra is going through, then bragging about their relationship to Catra’s face would be doubly so. Catra says nothing in response to Glimmer’s statement, just looks at her with narrowed, curious eyes. Glimmer casts about for something else to talk about, or an excuse to return to her room. “Oh!” She’s found something for both. “I had something to give you, actually,” she says. “C’mon.” Catra gives her a confused look, but climbs to her feet and follows Glimmer out of the living room, down the hall and up the stairs. They head into her room, Catra standing just inside the doorway with a confused expression on her face as Glimmer kneels down by her backpack and starts to dig through it.

“Here it is,” Glimmer announces, pulling a book from her backpack and standing up. She holds the book out to Catra, who hesitantly takes it and frowns down at the cover.

“What is this?” she asks after a moment, looking up at Glimmer. Glimmer blinks at her. She’d thought it was fairly self-explanatory.

“It’s my U.S. History textbook from last year,” she says. “It’s not, like, perfect, and it only covers the United States, but I thought it would be a good way for you get caught up on…everything. Bow showed Adora a bunch of documentaries, I think, and I can ask him for a list, but this would be a good starting point.” Catra looks back down at the book, cracking it open and balancing it in one hand while she flips through the pages. Glimmer watches the expression on Catra’s face as it flickers from a restrained curiosity to bitter disappointment.

“I…can’t read this,” Catra says after a moment. Her voice is smaller than Glimmer is used to hearing it.

“What?” Glimmer says. Catra holds the book out, and Glimmer takes it hesitantly, examining it to figure out if she’d somehow grabbed a copy in another language or something—though she’s pretty sure the Bright Moon Library doesn’t keep non-English copies of history textbooks lying around. “What’s wrong with it?” she says, flipping through the pages.

“Nothing’s wrong with _it_ ,” Catra says. “I…can’t really read.” _Oh_. Glimmer’s gaze shoots up from the textbook to stare at Catra, who is looking away, eyes focused somewhere in the corner of the room. “Ms. Weaver never bothered to teach me,” she says quietly. “Adora—Adora was teaching me, before. But I never learned to be very good at it, and I haven’t practiced in a hundred years. I can still sign my name, I think. I can make sense of the numbers on the TV remote. Maybe I could get through a few pages of that book, if I tried, but it would take me a very long time.”

“Oh.” Glimmer doesn’t know how this never occurred to her. Catra had been raised from birth by Ms. Weaver, and illiteracy was much more common a hundred years ago, obviously. But Adora had been able to read, so Glimmer just…hadn’t thought about it. “Okay, well, we should probably work on that at some point,” Glimmer says, returning the textbook to her backpack. “I’m probably not the best person to teach you, but maybe my dad can or something. I’ll have to talk to him about it.” Catra says nothing, neither agreeing or disagreeing to that plan, so Glimmer makes a mental note to go ahead with it. “In the meantime, though,” Glimmer says, opening her laptop on her desk, “I think I’ve still got the audiobook version of this textbook somewhere. I pirated it last year because the text in that thing is _tiny_.” She pauses. “Um, audiobooks are, like, a recording of someone reading the book, so you can listen to it instead of reading it yourself.”

“Sounds useful.”

“It is.” Glimmer probably wouldn’t have passed U.S. History without it. “I have an old iPod lying around here somewhere. I’ll put it on there so you can listen to it whenever.” That sentence probably doesn’t make any sense to Catra, but she just nods, and Glimmer starts digging through her desk drawers. She knows she has an _archaic_ iPod somewhere in here. “How come you didn’t tell us sooner that you couldn’t read?” she asks as she opens another drawer, glancing up at Catra. “I mean, I guess it never came up, but…”

“Well, at first I wasn’t planning on being alive long enough for it to matter,” Catra says. Glimmer notes the past tense but doesn’t comment on it, silently hoping that it means Catra won’t run away again. “And then…it makes me feel stupid. It did before, too, but the world is so different now. It’s worse.” Glimmer feels a pang of sympathy in her chest.

“I know how you feel,” she says, and Catra _scoffs_.

“Right,” she says, voice grating with sarcasm. Glimmer stops digging through the drawer and straightens up, turning to frown at Catra.

“You know literally nothing about me,” she says. The words come out a bit angry. Catra stares at her. “Like, absolutely nothing. Mostly because you’ve refused to talk to anyone. But you’re just going to assume that everything you feel is completely unique to you? You don’t think _anybody_ has ever suffered or grieved or felt stupid except you?” Catra shakes her head.

“That isn’t what I meant,” she says.

“Yeah, I think it is, though,” Glimmer says. “You won’t _listen_ to what anybody else is going through because you’re too caught up with your own shit. And I kind of understand that, but it’s a really fucking selfish way of looking at the world, Catra.” Catra takes a step back.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She doesn’t sound like she means it. She sounds…afraid. Glimmer remembers, suddenly, that Catra has been hunted by a demon-possessed, abusive mother figure for the past hundred years, and that outright aggression is probably not what she needs right now—not when she’s so clearly interpreting Glimmer’s tone as a threat.

“Thank you for apologizing,” Glimmer says. She turns back to the drawer, knowing that it will be easier to regulate her tone if she isn’t looking at the girl who is pissing her off. “And I do actually, genuinely understand how you feel, for the record. I’m dyslexic.”

“You’re…what?” Catra says.

“Dyslexic.” Glimmer finds the iPod and lets out a victorious hiss before she remembers that she also needs to find its charging cord. “It’s a learning disability. It’s—kind of complicated, but I basically just suck at reading. I have a hard time getting the words in the right order. It made school really fucking unpleasant when I was a kid, and for a long time, I just thought I was stupid. I thought everyone else was just smarter than me, _better_ than me, and that I was doing something wrong.”

“But you can read now,” Catra says. Glimmer shrugs.

“I can,” she says. “But it’s still harder for me than it is for everyone else. Especially with textbooks with stupidly tiny font.” She nods at her backpack on the floor, where the history textbook now rests. “That’s why I have the audiobook of it. I download them for every textbook I can find them for. Makes studying a lot easier.” She finds the iPod charging cord and sets about plugging it into her laptop, silently hoping that it still works. It’s this or a finding Catra a phone to listen on, and it’ll be a lot easier to explain an mp3 player.

“And that’s allowed?” Catra asks. Glimmer glances over at her, unsure what she's even being asked. “I mean, your teachers, your parents don’t mind you not reading?”

“Not really?” The iPod turns on, and Glimmer is distracted for a moment as she starts loading the audiobook file onto it. Once the process starts, she turns to look at Catra, considering the question. “They would mind if I just, like, didn’t do my homework or something,” she says. “Which I used to do, and they definitely minded. But I’m still doing everything I need to, I’m just doing it differently. They don’t mind that.”

“That’s…very different from how I grew up,” Catra says, and Glimmer doesn’t doubt it. She remembers the lightning scars on Catra’s back and shivers. “I’ll listen to the book,” Catra says, louder and firmer, and Glimmer guesses that the moment of vulnerability is over. “But I would like to learn to read, as well.” Glimmer opens her mouth to say _well, duh_ , and closes it again. Catra is asking for something, sounds like she actually _wants_ something for the first time since they dragged her out of that house. That’s a good sign, and Glimmer isn’t going to say anything that might make her take it back.

“Sounds good,” Glimmer says. “I’ll talk to my parents about it. They can teach you, or they can find someone else who can.” Catra nods, and slips out of the room without another word. Glimmer watches her go, a little bit of the stress that’s been pushing on her shoulders for days now fading. It seems like Catra might be doing better. Maybe Glimmer can stop checking constantly to make sure that she hasn’t run away.

* * *

“You know, jumping from there isn’t going to do much for you,” Glimmer says, leaning out Catra’s bedroom window. “Not unless you land on your head or something.” Several feet to her right, sitting on the roof of Glimmer’s house, Catra turns to look at her, blinking in confusion.

“I’m not going to jump,” Catra says after a moment, turning back to stare up the driveway. Glimmer sighs, trying not to sound too relieved. It’s been a month to the day since Adora died, _was killed_ , and Catra has been doing…better. But judging by the dead silence Glimmer had gotten when she’d tried to make conversation with her housemate over breakfast, they’re both intensely aware of the date.

“How the fuck did you even get over there?” Glimmer asks, leaning farther out the window to judge the distance between the straight-to-the-ground drop outside of it and the sloped section of roof off to the right that Catra is perched on.

“I climbed,” Catra says. “There’s wood trim there, beneath the window. It wasn’t hard.” Glimmer glances down, finds the trim that Catra is talking about, and her jaw drops. It protrudes maybe a centimeter at the absolute most from the wall. “You can join me, if you like,” Catra says. Glimmer glances at her, glances back down at the trim, and wonders if she physically _can_ do that. But it’s rare for Catra to invite Glimmer to spend time with her, so Glimmer takes the opportunity. She slings one leg over the windowsill and searches for the trim with her foot.

“Hold onto the rain gutter,” Catra says. Glimmer bites back her instinctive annoyance at being told what to do unprompted and takes Catra’s advice, in the interest of not falling two stories onto her front lawn. Like she told Catra, it wouldn’t kill her, but it would also _suck_.

Somehow, Glimmer makes it the roof. Catra scoots over, making room for her, and Glimmer sits down with a huff, silently promising herself that next time she’s going to leave Catra on the roof alone. Catra says nothing after Glimmer joins her, so Glimmer keeps quiet as well, looking out over the driveway and the streets beyond. The sun is still low in the sky—Glimmer has gotten into the extremely unpleasant habit of waking up early on weekends, at first out of a desire to keep an eye on Catra, now simply because she can’t stop—and its dull, quiet light is spreading out across the town, bouncing off of rooftops and of streets temporarily empty of snow. It’s been warm the past few weeks, and the snow has mostly melted, but Glimmer notices a distinct and unpleasant chill in the air. It’s getting cold again.

“I used to do this with Adora,” Catra says, and Glimmer jolts slightly as she remembers that she isn’t alone. “My bedroom window led straight onto the roof. She was always warm, no matter how cold it was outside.” She pauses, but Glimmer stays quiet, uncertain of what to say. She kind of feels like she’s intruding, now, sitting in a space that belongs to someone else. “I thought I would feel…better,” Catra says, “out here. Closer to her or something.” She shrugs. “I don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Glimmer whispers. Catra shakes her head.

“I just wish I could _do_ something,” she says. “Everything I’ve found on the computer—there’s no way to bring her back.” She shrugs again, and her shoulders slump at the bottom of the motion, defeated. “We could send her on. There are spells to settle restless spirits. But if she goes, her magic on the house will be lifted, and Shadow Weaver will be free.” Glimmer shivers at that, drawing her knees up to her chest to fight the chill in the air. The glimpses that she’s gotten of Shadow Weaver, the horrible red light in the house and the scars on Catra’s back…she can’t imagine what that kind of monster would look like if it were unleashed on the world. “I would almost be okay with that,” Catra says, and Glimmer tenses. “The world isn’t my problem. But Adora would hate me for it from wherever she would go, and that’s…”

“I don’t think Adora could ever hate you,” Glimmer says quietly. “But, uh, let’s not free Shadow Weaver. I don’t like that idea.” Catra snorts.

“I won’t,” she promises. She goes silent after that, staring into the cold sun. Glimmer watches her in her peripheral vision. Catra has adjusted to the world quickly, even more quickly than Adora had. She’d had none of the hesitance around modern fashion that had held Adora back, filling her borrowed closet with jackets and hoodies and jeans. She’d listened to Glimmer’s textbook in a matter of days, and she’s learned to read at a rate that almost makes Glimmer jealous—fast enough to do internet research, even if she has to google a lot of words. But the _enthusiasm_ for it all that Adora had had is missing. Catra has learned about the world like she’s checking items off of a list, fulfilling responsibilities that she’s uninterested in as fast as she possibly can. Glimmer wonders what Catra would be like when she’s happy.

“We can keep looking,” Glimmer says, turning back to look out over the driveway. “We’ll find a way to help Adora.”

“I don’t think we will,” Catra says. “Anything short of killing Shadow Weaver—“ She stops. Slowly, she turns to look at Glimmer, eyes widened slightly, and Glimmer’s heart drops.

“Is that even possible?” she says, almost whispering. Catra shakes her head slowly.

“I…don’t know,” she says. “I haven’t looked.” Glimmer opens her mouth, closes it again, tries to think of something to _say_.

A car on the street grows closer. Glimmer glances at it automatically, eyes drawn to the source of the sound, and she recognizes Bow’s Jeep as it slows and turns into her driveway. He parks just in front of the house, looking up at the two of them on the roof from the driver’s seat. The engine stops, and he climbs out, eyes flicking back and forth between Catra and Glimmer, poorly masked concern on his face.

“Hey, guys,” Bow calls up to them. “Enjoying the weather?”

“Not at all,” Catra calls back to him. Glimmer shakes her head.

“Yeah, me neither.” Bow shoves his hands in his jacket pockets. “Everything okay? How’d you even get up there?”

“Everything’s fine,” Glimmer says. Bow’s eyes flick over to hers, and she doesn’t need to hear him say a word to know that he’s concerned about the same thing she had been, when she first found Catra on the rooftop. She shakes her head minutely, and some of the concern on Bow’s face fades away. “We climbed out here,” she says, gesturing to the window off to their left. Bow’s eyebrows raise.

“…Okay,” he says. “Uh. Why?”

“To think,” Catra says before Glimmer can answer him. “We have an idea.”

“And what’s that?” Bow asks, leaning back against the hood of his car. Catra _grins_ then, and there’s a bloodthirst in it that makes Glimmer flinch. It’s an unnatural expression that looks frighteningly normal on Catra’s face. Suddenly she isn’t a lost teenager, pulled out of time, not a victim of her mother figure or the fated prey of a demon. She’s dangerous, and she’s _terrifying_.

“We’re going to kill Shadow Weaver,” Catra says.

* * *

“So, like, we do an exorcism, right?” Glimmer says. Bow holds out a mug of hot chocolate, and she takes it, smiling to herself when their fingers brush together. “I mean, she’s a demon.” Glimmer takes a sip, humming in satisfaction. Bow makes the best hot chocolate, and it had been _cold_ out on that roof. “Or, like, a lot of demons in a trench coat. I don’t know. The point is, exorcisms work on demons. Don’t they?”

“You have chocolate on your face,” Bow says. Glimmer scrubs at her mouth with one hand, flushing with embarrassment. “And that’s not really how it works.” He hands a second mug to Catra, who is sitting a few feet away in one of the armchairs Micah had put in their living room last week after realizing their couch didn’t fit four people. Catra takes the hot chocolate and immediately holds it close to her face, a hint of excitement in her eyes.

“Exorcisms are a lot harder than they look in the movies.” Bow settles into the couch next to Glimmer, and she leans into him. “It isn’t just, like, chanting and holy water and the demon goes away. You have to have enough brute strength, like, magically speaking, to force the demon out of the person. I mean, you’re really talented, Glimmer, but seeing how Ms. Weaver is possessed by a _bunch_ of demons who could all be really powerful individually, let alone together—“

“Yeah,” Glimmer mutters, deflating. “So no exorcism, got it. What else can we do, though? Since we probably can’t _literally_ kill the demons, right?” Bow nods. “So we have to find _some_ way to send them back to…wherever.” Glimmer pauses. “Where do they go, anyway? Like, is hell real? Do they live there? Can human souls actually go there after they die?”

“Glimmer.” Bow sounds pained. “I have _no idea_.” Glimmer realizes that she’s definitely off track now, and nods, falling silent and sipping at her hot chocolate while she thinks. It doesn’t take long for another idea to occur to her, and she almost doesn’t want to say it. She glances over at Catra, who is still staring at her hot chocolate like it’s something precious, feet pulled up onto the chair and knees drawn up against her chest. She’s _young_ , Glimmer remembers suddenly. A hundred and something, technically speaking, but really just eighteen. Her and Bow’s age, with an extra century of _hurt_ inside her, and missing the only person who, as far as Glimmer can tell, had ever shown her kindness.

If Glimmer can do something to make Catra’s life better…she has to, right? Even if it’s a hard choice. Even if it’s something she doesn’t want to do. It’s still the right thing to do, to help.

“We may not be able to kill the demons,” Glimmer says quietly. Both Catra and Bow turn to look at her, eyes curious, and Glimmer takes a deep breath. “But what happens if we kill the host?” Catra’s eyes flash with understanding immediately, but Bow just frowns at Glimmer, not quite getting it—or maybe not wanting to.

“Glimmer?” Bow asks. There’s already a hint of disappointment in his voice. Glimmer should’ve expected that. “What are you talking about?”

“Ms. Weaver—the person—is still in there, somewhere,” Glimmer says. She glances at Catra. “Right?” Catra shrugs.

“As far as I can tell,” she says. Glimmer nods.

“So if we kill her, maybe the demons will disappear,” she says. “Go back to hell, or wherever.”

“I mean, sure,” Bow says, voice tight. “Or maybe they’ll possess one of us. I don’t think they’ll be, like, _excited_ about leaving.”

“Ms. Weaver invited them in,” Catra says. “I don’t know if they can take our bodies without an invitation. And even if they could, Adora would stop them.”

“But there’s no guarantee this will _work_!” Bow’s voice cracks on the last word, and he turns back to Glimmer with a desperate look in his eyes. “There’s no way to know if the demons will leave, or take one of us, or just stay in the house as demons instead of—of whatever they are right now!”

“But at least we’ll be doing _something_ ,” Glimmer says. “It’s worth a shot—“

“ _Worth a shot_?” Bow shakes his head so quickly it must hurt. “You’re going to _murder somebody_ just to see if anything happens?”

“She’s not going to murder anybody,” Catra says. “I’ll do it.” Bow turns to stare at her.

“What?” he asks.

“I’ll do it.” Catra shrugs. “You clearly don’t want to, and I doubt Glimmer wants to do it herself.” Glimmer shakes her head, shuddering. It had been her idea, but she doesn’t want the blood on her hands. “So I’ll do it,” Catra says. “I’ll kill Ms. Weaver.”

“You—you can’t—“ Bow takes a deep breath, and Glimmer hears the way it shakes, recognizes the signs of Bow’s anxiety rising like a tidal wave. “You can’t just _do_ that,” he says, almost pleading. “How can you be _okay_ with doing that?” Catra says nothing. Glimmer thinks of the scars she had seen on Catra’s back and can’t blame her for not hesitating, can’t blame her for _wanting_ to be the one that holds the knife.

_Will they use a knife?_

“Bow,” Glimmer says quietly. She reaches out, setting a hand on his shoulder, and he jerks away from her touch. She pulls her hand back, trying not to let that hurt her. “It’s—it’s not _right_. I get that. But I think it’s our best choice.” Bow shakes his head, but Glimmer presses on, desperate to make him understand, desperate to make him stop looking at her like he doesn’t _know_ her. “Adora is suffering in there,” she says, curling her hand into a fist to stop herself from reaching for him again. “Catra’s found spells to help her—pass on, or whatever, but we can’t do them with Shadow Weaver there, waiting to break out. So it’s—I think it weighs out, right? Ms. Weaver was— _is_ a terrible person, and she would’ve died decades ago, anyway, if she hadn’t been turned into…” Glimmer gestures vaguely. “And we’re doing it to help somebody, so I think it balances out. Like k-killing her isn’t as bad as just…letting Adora suffer forever.”

“That’s not how it _works_ ,” Bow says. He sounds like he might cry. “You can’t just—we’re supposed to be the good guys.” He glances back at Catra, who is watching them argue, expressionless. “ _I’m_ supposed to be good. We can’t just weight two bad things against each other and pick the less bad one. We need to do something _good_.”

Catra laughs.

It strikes Glimmer speechless, and makes Bow turn to face Catra completely. They sit, side-by-side and with an impassable distance between them, watching until Catra calms down. She shakes her head at them, a look of amusement still on her face.

“You’re both idiots,” she says. “Who _cares_ what’s _right_ or _good_? Do you think the world gives a fuck? You, too, Glimmer. What do you mean it _balances out_? Nobody is keeping track. Nobody knows that Ms. Weaver is still alive in that house, and _nobody_ will know or _care_ if we kill her. No one except us, and I, for one, will be happy to see her die. Won’t you?”

“That’s not the point,” Bow says. Catra’s amused look drops, and she turns to him with a glare.

“Then what _is_ the point?” she says. Bow shakes his head, unable to speak. “There’s no scales. There’s no _rules_. The only thing that _matters_ in life is suffering as little as you possibly can. Adora and I should’ve died a hundred years ago. We should’ve been _done_ already. But we’re not, and Adora is _still_ being hurt. If we can end that for her, it doesn’t matter _how_. It matters that it will be _over_.” She falls silent. Glimmer finds her voice again, turning to Bow and reaching out for him before she can stop herself. He doesn’t flinch away from her hand this time, but the exhausted look on his face tells her not to celebrate that.

“Bow,” Glimmer says. He meets her eyes. “You don’t have to be a part of this if you don’t want to. Okay? Me and Catra can do this on our own. I don’t want…I don’t want you to do something that you don’t want to do.” Bow is silent for a long time. Glimmer imagines him getting up and leaving without a word, knows that he would be justified to do so.

“Are you crazy?” Bow finally says. His voice is hoarse. Glimmer blinks at him uncertainly. “I can’t walk away from this. From you. I can’t let you do this by yourself, Glimmer. We’re a team.” The words make Glimmer flinch. It’s always been how they’ve approached everything, since they were little kids, but now, Bow speaks the words like they’re _heavy_. Like they’re dragging him down.

“I just…” Glimmer takes a deep breath and forces back the tears prickling at her eyes. “Please don’t do this for me,” she whispers. Bow shrugs defeatedly, and when Glimmer’s hand slips from his shoulder, he catches it in one of his.

“I have to,” he says. Glimmer shakes her head. Bow squeezes her hand, and it isn’t comforting. It’s gentle, but it _hurts_.

“If that’s settled,” Catra says, and Glimmer remembers that there’s a third person in the room, “I’ll go get started on researching the details.” Glimmer nods. Catra stands up from her chair and tips her mug back, finishing her hot chocolate. “I’ll be in my room,” she says to Glimmer, and slips out of the living room without another word.

“I should go,” Bow says after a moment. Glimmer turns to look at him, hand tightening around his.

“Bow,” she says, unsure how to ask but wanting him to stay. Bow just shakes his head and pulls his hand out of Glimmer’s as he gets to his feet. “We should talk about this.”

“I don’t think there’s much to say,” Bow says softly. Glimmer feels the words as a blow to the chest, forcing the breath from her lungs. “You’re going to do what you have to, right? And so am I.”

“I’m sorry,” Glimmer whispers. Bow nods. He doesn’t say it’s okay. He doesn’t even look _mad_ at her, which makes Glimmer feel worse. “Do you—“ She takes a deep breath. “Do you still love me?”

“Yeah,” Bow says. He looks away. “Always.” He starts to walk towards the door again, and this time, Glimmer doesn’t reach out to stop him. She’s too busy focusing on her breathing, trying to make sure that each gasp doesn’t come out as a sob.

* * *

“Catra?” Glimmer knocks lightly at the doorframe. Catra mostly keeps her bedroom door open except at night. Glimmer isn’t sure why—it isn’t a rule or expectation of the household; Glimmer keeps her own door shut at least twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day—but it does ease some of her residual nervousness about Catra to be able to _see_ that she hasn’t run away again.

“What is it?” Catra says, looking up at Glimmer. She’s sitting on her bed, a book open in her lap. She’s taken Micah’s advice to practice her reading very, very seriously. Glimmer spots a book in Catra’s hands more often than not.

“I just…wanted to see how you were feeling,” Glimmer says, leaning against the doorframe. “After earlier, and about…our plan.”

“I don’t have any qualms about killing Ms. Weaver,” Catra says. She shoots her book a regretful glance before she dog-ears the page and closes it, setting it aside on the bedsheets to turn her full attention to Glimmer.

“I didn’t think you did,” Glimmer says. “But, I mean, it’s a big deal, right? Even if it’s someone who kinda deserves it.” Catra shrugs.

“Maybe I’ll think so afterwards,” she says. Her tone makes it clear that she doubts it. Glimmer sighs. This is…well, it’s not what she _expected_ , but maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. Catra has been unceasingly focused on Adora since they brought her back; it makes a certain degree of sense that not even the thought of killing can make her flinch.

“Okay,” Glimmer says. She pauses, trying to think of a way to phrase her next question, and Catra rolls her eyes.

“What did you actually come up here to ask, Glimmer?” she says. Glimmer winces. She’s not good at subtlety when it comes to emotions, empathy, communication. That’s Bow’s thing. Glimmer is much better at just coming out and saying things.

“Earlier, when you said that life is just…suffering as little as you can,” she says. Catra nods. “Do you actually believe that?” Catra sighs heavily and turns her head, looking out the window. It’s still bright outside, sunlight pouring into the room, though it does nothing to dispel the heavy cold that’s settled over the town.

“It’s all my life has ever been, at least,” she says. Glimmer opens her mouth to argue, but Catra beats her to it—“Except for Adora.” Catra shrugs. “Adora made me happy. She didn’t hurt. And we both died for it, her twice over. What lesson was I mean to take from that, do you think?”

“Adora can’t be the _only_ thing,” Glimmer says. Her voice comes out pleading, and for good reason—if Adora is the only thing Catra has ever lived for, what will happen when they’re done helping, and Adora is gone? Not just dead, but _gone_? “There must’ve been something else that you liked.” Catra remains silent, staring out the window, and Glimmer is about to give up and walk away when Catra finally speaks.

“Music,” she says quietly. Glimmer freezes in the doorway, hardly daring to breathe for fear of Catra shutting down again. “And…the lake. The one out west of town. I’ve never been, but I could see it from my window. It was pretty. I always wanted to go swimming there.” She goes quiet. Glimmer latches onto the information like a lifeline—which, she supposes, is more or less what it is. It’s _something_ , anything, that might keep Catra _here_.

“Okay,” Glimmer says. Catra turns to look at her. “We can work with that. I mean, you can’t go swimming in it right now, since it’s cold as fuck out there and I’m pretty sure it’s frozen over, but we can go out there to look sometime. I think there’s some walking trails.” Catra’s face does something funny, something that almost looks like _interest_. “I can put some music on your iPod. And we can go swimming in the lake this summer, if you still want to by then.”

“Thank you,” Catra says. Glimmer nods.

“I just want you to be okay,” she says. “So…”

“Why?” Catra asks. Glimmer blinks at her, confused, and Catra elaborates, “Why do you care what happens to me? I haven’t exactly been a good guest. I haven’t given you a reason to care.”

“I…” Glimmer hesitates. She doesn’t want to make this about Adora. She’s getting the sense that part of Catra’s problem is just how _much_ of herself is about Adora, and Glimmer doesn’t want to contribute to that. But she doesn’t want to lie, either. “Adora loved you,” Glimmer says, pretending not to notice the way Catra flinches at the past tense. “And I trust her, so that means there’s something in you that’s worth it. And…I don’t know. I just care. You’re hurting, so I want to help. That’s just human, right? That’s what we’re supposed to do.”

“Maybe.” Catra turns back to the window. “I think I’ve forgotten that part.”

“That’s okay,” Glimmer says. “Just—stick around, okay? Stay here. I’d like to get to know the person Adora loved so much.”

“I’ll do my best,” Catra says softly. “We’ll see what happens after we help Adora.” Glimmer nods, swallowing back the urge to ask Catra to promise to stay.

“With Adora…” Maybe Catra isn’t the best person to talk to about this, but Glimmer can’t imagine asking Bow, not after everything that happened downstairs. She doesn’t want to ask Bow for _anything_ right now, not even reassurance, just in case he doesn’t want to give it. She isn’t sure how much their relationship can take of her asking and his giving, not while the stakes of their decisions are so high.

“Do you think it’s worth hoping?” Glimmer asks. Catra glances at her curiously. “Like, hoping for a miracle, I guess. Hoping we’ll—we’ll get her back, somehow.” She shrugs. “I just—I wanna believe that she’ll get to be happy at the end of all this. Not just…gone.”

“I think you would be very stupid to believe that,” Catra says. Her tone is cutting, and Glimmer almost gets angry before she recognizes the pain that runs underneath it. “Adora’s body is _gone_ , Glimmer. We both watched her turn to dust. Necromancy with a corpse and no soul makes monsters. Necromancy with a soul and no corpse wouldn’t make anything at all.” Glimmer doesn’t have a retort for that. Her magic lessons with her dad hadn’t covered raising the dead. “I think you and Bow have used up all your miracles for a lifetime, raising Adora and then me.”

“Maybe, but—“ Glimmer sighs. “Don’t you _want_ it to happen?”

“Wanting something and hoping for it aren’t the same thing,” Catra says. “Adora is gone, and she isn’t coming back. I can’t hope for anything else. Believing that she will would kill me when she doesn’t.” Catra shrugs and turns to look out the window again. “I just want to see this through,” she says. “And when it’s over, I want to figure out how to move on. That’s all.”

“Okay.” Glimmer hesitates in the doorway for a moment longer, but Catra doesn’t turn back from the window this time, and she doesn’t speak again. Eventually, Glimmer slips away, back down the hall towards her own room, mixed emotions pressing down on her chest like a stone.

* * *

Someone knocks on Glimmer’s door. She checks her phone before she speaks, wondering if— _hoping that_ —she’s missed a text from Bow while she’s been doing homework with her phone on silent, hoping that he’s come back to the house to talk more about the plan they had begun to outline this morning. She wants a chance to drive that horrible tired look from his eyes. But there’s no new notifications, and she locks her phone with a sigh.

“Come in,” she calls, wondering what Catra might need. The door swings open, and Glimmer blinks in surprise when it reveals not Catra, but Angella. “Mom,” she says. “I thought you and Dad were running errands all day.”

“We were,” Angella says. Glimmer frowns, glances at the clock on her laptop, and realizes that it’s almost dinnertime. She hasn’t eaten anything all day, which probably isn’t helping her to fight the creeping hopelessness in the back of her mind. “Glimmer, are you alright?”

“Yeah.” Glimmer closes her school documents on her laptop. She’s apparently been working on homework for six hours straight; she’s done enough for today. “Just tired, I think. Why?”

“I ran into Catra downstairs,” Angella says. “She seemed…odd.”

“She’s kind of like that,” Glimmer says. “Probably because, well, y’know.” Angella nods. She had taken the whole situation fairly well, once it had actually been explained to her. Glimmer just hadn’t had the energy the night they brought Catra back to lie to her mother, not after Angella went and fetched Catra from the police station in the middle of the night. She had let the whole truth spill out—ghosts and demons and resurrections, all of it. At the time, Angella had just hugged her. Now—well, Glimmer is familiar with the expression of her mother’s that means _consequences_.

“She seemed more odd than usual,” Angella amends. “Do you know why that might be?” Glimmer sighs. She rests her elbows on the edge of her desk and buries her face in her palms.

“We talked this morning,” she says quietly. “You’re just going to be mad at me.” Between her fingers, she can see Angella cross her arms.

“Well, doesn’t that seem like a good reason why you shouldn’t do—whatever it is you’re planning to do?”

“It’s not that _simple_!” Glimmer’s voice cracks. She pulls her face from her hands and stands up, pacing over to her bedroom window just to have something to look at other than her mother. On its stand just below the window, though, is Glimmer’s staff, and her eyes are drawn to it instead of the view outside. It hurts to look at. It was a _gift_ from her dad, a tool meant to be used to protect her friends, and now it’s going to be an accessory to—to—

“Please explain it to me,” Angella says. Her voice is closer now, and Glimmer knows that she’s standing behind her. “You’ve been locking me out for months, Glimmer, and I understand why now, so please don’t keep at it.”

“I just—“ Glimmer takes a deep breath. “We’re going to do something. Something _wrong_ , and I don’t _want_ to, but I don’t think we have a choice.”

“Glimmer.” A hand rests on Glimmer’s shoulder. “What are you going to do?” Glimmer shakes her head.

“I can’t tell you,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.” Angella sighs. Glimmer is an expert in finding disappointment in her mother’s expressions, but she can’t quite detect any in the sound. Angella sounds more worried than anything, and maybe a little bit scared.

“Look at me,” Angella says. Glimmer turns, trembling slightly as she looks up at her mother. Angella holds out her arms. “Come here.” Glimmer does. She falls into the embrace with a desperation she didn’t know was brewing inside her, a need for comfort that she hadn’t noticed until it’s suddenly fulfilled.

Glimmer buries her face in her mother’s shoulder and cries.

She keeps it as short and silent as possible. She doesn’t _like_ crying in front of anyone, but if she had to pick someone, it would be Bow, not Angella. Angella doesn’t comment on the tears, thankfully, doesn’t try to soothe or calm Glimmer down. She just holds her tightly until Glimmer has stopped shaking.

“I’m very proud of you,” Angella says quietly, once Glimmer’s tears have dried. She doesn’t move to let go, and Glimmer doesn’t pull away from the hug. “I don’t think I said that before, when you explained everything. I’m proud of you for trying to help Adora and Catra. It _was_ foolish, and you should’ve told me about it, but it was very brave.” She squeezes Glimmer gently. “You’re a good person, and that wasn’t your father and I’s doing. You treat people well, and you make good choices because of that. You’ve done so much to try to help Catra because you’re _good_. So, whatever it is that you’re all planning to do…I’m sure that it’s the right decision. Because you’re making it.”

Glimmer realizes that she can never, ever tell her mother the truth. She can’t tell her what they’re planning, and when it’s over, when they’ve gone through with it, she can’t tell her what they’ve done. Because Angella is _wrong_. She’s wrong about the kind of person Glimmer is, and the kind of choice she’s making, and Glimmer doesn’t _want_ her mother to know the truth. She wants Angella to think of her as a good person. She doesn’t want to ruin herself in her mother’s eyes.

“Thanks, Mom,” Glimmer whispers. She pulls back from the hug and finds Angella smiling at her, soft and comforting. “I’d, um, I’d like to be alone now, if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” Angella says. She steps back. “I’ll text you when your father has dinner ready.” She slips out of the room, closing the door behind her. Glimmer sits down in place, on the floor, and her eyes drift back to the staff at her side in its stand. She can’t tell her father, either. She can’t tell him what she’s going to be party to with his gift, with his staff and the magic he taught her.

This has to stay a secret. It has to stay between her and Bow and Catra, and they can take it to their own graves someday. Glimmer doesn’t want her family to know the kind of person that she really is.

She just wishes Bow didn’t already know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> i really enjoyed writing this chapter. glimmer is a super fun character to dive into. if you like how i write her, check out my glimbow fake dating au, which is also right here on my ao3 page.
> 
> i don't think i have a whole lot else to say here. i'm on tumblr @sevens-evan and on twitter @sevens_evan if you wanna keep up with me; that's where i'll be keeping y'all up to date on my progress finishing this thing. plus i just think i'm very funny on tumblr. quality content over there.
> 
> please leave a comment if you enjoyed the chapter!


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